We'll Meet Again. Patricia Burns

his knife and fork down. ‘What d’you call this, then?’ he demanded.

      Annie held her breath. This was it. Fear throbbed through her.

      ‘B-beef and vegetable stew,’ Edna muttered, keeping her eyes on her own plate.

      ‘Beef? There’s no beef in this. It’s nothing but carrot and swede. Swede! Flaming cattle food!’

      Edna said nothing. Long experience had taught her that anything she said would be fuel to the fire.

      Walter’s hand slammed down on the table. ‘Where’s the meat in it?’ he demanded.

      The silence stretched, marked out by the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece.

      ‘Well?’ Walter barked.

      ‘It—it’s the rationing,’ Edna whispered.

      ‘The what? What did you say, woman?’

      Edna’s lips trembled. Annie felt sick. She longed to intervene, but knew that it would only make things worse.

      ‘Rationing,’ Edna repeated, her voice barely audible. ‘I got to m-make it stretch.’

      ‘Rationing? Flaming government! Here I am, working my fingers to the bone producing beef and those flaming pen-pushers up in Whitehall think they can tell me how much of it I can eat? I’ll give them rationing—’

      Relief washed over Annie, leaving her limp and wrung out. It was all right. Her father’s rage had been diverted. She and her mother sat silent, not even meeting each other’s eyes. They ate, though neither of them had much of an appetite left, but the food must not be wasted, so they pushed it into their mouths, chewed, swallowed. All the while Walter’s invective flowed round them, battering their ears, hurting their brains, and they were glad, for words directed at a distant authority were nothing compared to blows rained on them.

      When the meal was over, Edna immediately started washing up, busying herself to deflect any possible criticism. Annie was left to follow her father out into the fields again.

      As they trudged back to the half-finished fence, she looked towards Silver Sands. There it was, crouching under the sea wall. And there he must be. Tom. Tom, from a magic land called Norseley, far away from Wittlesham, where all families were happy and no one got hurt. In her daydreams now, she no longer got whisked over the rainbow to Oz, but ran away with Tom, hand in hand, to Norseley.

      The afternoon went on for ever. To the north and to the south of them, distant gunfire could be heard, while white vapour trails and black balls of smoke scrawled across the sky. At first Walter worked silently, but as the sun beat down on their heads and the grinding labour began to sap his strength, the curses and the criticisms started again. The rant against the government had not been enough of a safety valve. Life itself was stacked against Walter, and someone had to take the blame.

      ‘Look at that—that’s not straight. For Christ’s sake, can’t you do anything right? All you got to do is hold it straight while I hit it. It’s not difficult. A halfwit could do it. Jesus wept! Why are you so useless? Why was I given just one useless girl—?’

      And so on until he was ready to hammer in the next stake, mercifully leaving him without spare breath for speech.

      Annie held grimly on to each fence post, trying her hardest to hold it still, hold it straight. But she could not fight against the force of the hammer blows when they landed off-centre and drove the post out of true. Her head ached from the sun and her body ached from bracing against the sledgehammer. She tried to cut her father out, centring her thoughts on the evening to come. She would walk across this very field, past Silver Sands, over the sea wall, and there Tom would be, waiting for her. And then everything would be all right.

      When the posts were at last driven in, then the barbed wire had to be stretched between them and held with heavy-duty staples. Annie struggled with the coil while her father hammered in the staples.

      ‘Keep it tight, can’t you? No good having it sag like that. Beasts’ll be through that before the week’s out. Tighter, you stupid mare! Put some effort into it. Jesus—!’

      At last the job was done. Now there was only afternoon milking to get through. It was like walking on the edge of a volcano. Annie knew it would only take one mistake to set off the eruption. Weariness and tension made her clumsy. Only luck brought her through without making a serious blunder.

      Teatime was another tense meal, the silence broken only by the Home Service. They all put their food down and stopped chewing to listen to the six o’clock news. Forty-two Allied planes had been lost, but they had claimed ninety of the enemy. In homes across the country there were desperate cheers for another day’s holding on. At Marsh Edge Farm Walter merely grunted, while Annie and Edna said nothing.

      Annie thought about the plane she had seen go down. One fewer to invade England. Later, she would talk to Tom about it, for he must have seen it too.

      Annie ached to get away. Soon, soon the chores would be over and she would be free. Every fibre of her being longed to escape, to set off across the fields to the sea wall. But her conscience fought against it. What about her mother? Without her there, her mother would be sure to catch it. She was in a ferment of indecision.

      They finished off the last tasks of the day and went back into the house. Walter dropped down into his chair.

      ‘Pull my boots off, woman,’ he growled.

      Edna hurried to do as she was bid, kneeling on the rag rug in front of him. She fumbled the laces undone, then began to draw off the boot. It stuck. Edna tugged and caught Walter’s bad toe.

      ‘Aagh! You stupid—’

      He lashed out with his other foot. The heavy boot smashed into Edna’s shoulder, flinging her back so that her head cracked against the flagstone floor.

      ‘Mum!’

      For a vital few seconds fear for her mother overcame fear for herself. Annie flew across the kitchen to cradle Edna’s head in her arms.

      ‘Leave her be, you interfering little bitch! Coming between man and wife—!’

      Walter’s boot thudded into her legs and buttocks, while Annie and Edna clung together and whimpered with terror …

      The mothers were talking on the veranda again—his mam, his aunty Betty and Mrs Sutton. This time, thank goodness, Beryl hadn’t come. The anticipation of seeing Annie filled Tom up, so that he felt as if he could almost burst with the excitement of it. There was so much to talk about, with the Battle of Britain happening right over their heads that very day. On top of that, he wanted to hold her hand again, and to walk along together with her as they discussed what had gone on in the sky. There wasn’t much time left now, just this evening and tomorrow, for on Saturday they had to go home. So every minute counted. He slipped out of the chalet, checked that his sister and the cousins weren’t looking, and made a run for the sea wall.

      He was used to waiting. Sometimes Annie didn’t manage to get away till quite late. One evening, she hadn’t come at all. When he’d asked about it, she wouldn’t answer directly, wouldn’t even look at him, had just said she had to help her mother. Something about her expression had alarmed him. That look of fierce hatred that came into her face when her father was mentioned.

      ‘Why? What was so important that you couldn’t get away?’ he asked.

      ‘I just had to stay,’ she said.

      ‘But what for?’ he persisted.

      ‘I just had to, all right? Don’t you have to do things when your parents tell you?’

      ‘Yes,’ he admitted.

      But he was sure there was more to it than that.

      He slid down the wall and sat on the sand at the bottom. It was still warm from the day’s sunshine. He had given up all pretence of painting now and just lay against the rough grass, looking out across the water and thinking. Soon, Annie would be here.