A Scent of Lavender. Elizabeth Elgin

      ‘And how do they know what that Hitler’s thinking, then? Rang up Mr Churchill, did he?’

      ‘’Course not! But it seems the tides aren’t favourable any longer; not until next April, or May. And it could be a fact, because William said that a message had been picked up from Moscow and it said the RAF had bombed the German invasion fleet and destroyed a lot of it.’

      ‘Now how do they know that? How can our lot tell what’s being said in Moscow?’

      ‘Haven’t a clue. Seems we have operators listening all the time; just scanning the airwaves and writing it all down.’

      ‘And do you believe it, Ness?’

      ‘I’d like to – about Hitler’s invasion barges bein’ bombed and the invasion put off for six months. An’ I’d like to think that when winter comes, there won’t be so much bombing of London.’

      ‘Ah, it’s a bad do, there. I’m glad that Ainsty doesn’t seem worth an air raid. And it isn’t just the East End that’s getting bombed. The posh bits are getting it, too – and Buckingham Palace has had another hit. Where’s it all going to end, will you tell me?’

      ‘Dunno, Kate. What I do know is that it must be awful to creep out of a shelter when the all clear goes and find your ’ouse is a pile of rubble.’

      It was a terrible thought. There were times when she wished she knew how to pray, because sure as eggs was eggs, it was going to be Liverpool’s turn to suffer, just as London was suffering now. Stood to reason. Liverpool was a port. Before very much longer it could be backs-to-the-wall time in Liverpool, too.

      So count your blessings she reminded herself sternly, silently, that you live and work in a backwater called Nun Ainsty, and can sleep easy in your bed at night and not in an Anderson shelter or in the Underground in London.

      ‘Ar, well – I’ll be off to the shippon to give a hand,’ she sighed, wondering as she crossed the familiar yard, how our lot could listen in to Moscow, and decided it was William, trying to sound important. It was at that moment that she looked up and saw ambulances at the back of the manor. Four of them.

      ‘Kate!’ She ran back to the kitchen. ‘Come and look – over there! They’ve come, then, at last!’

       SIX

      Country people always said that St Simon and St Jude’s day – at the end of October – marked the end of the fine weather. After the twenty-eighth, people said winter was near at hand, yet this first day of October was mild and bright with a sun rising golden above the far hedgerows.

      The morning was still light because the clocks had not been put back an hour, but kept instead on summer time to give an extra hour of daylight to the benefit of all. And if this proved successful, the government said, then in spring clocks would be put forward an hour – as indeed they always had been – to give two extra hours of daylight. Which meant, Lorna calculated, that when summer came again it would be light until almost eleven. Quite sensible, really.

      The sun threw a long shadow from the early morning sky, making cycle and rider look high and lean. It was going to be a beautiful day. Leaves were now a darker green, their summer tenderness long gone. Soon, they would yellow and wither and fall, yet the leafless trees would seem every bit as beautiful; bare branches and twigs laying like black lace on a winter sky of soft grey.

      Yet on this sweet morning, summer still lingered. Elderberries, once the sweet-smelling flowers of July hedges, now hung in clusters of deep purple berries. This year they would be left ungathered; this year no one had sugar to spare for elderberry wine.

      She stopped at the top of Priory Lane, balancing the cycle with the toe of her shoe, waiting for passing traffic, then crossed the road for Meltonby and the post office which would have been open – though not to the general public – since six, when the GPO van from York sorting office delivered letters, packets and parcels, which Mrs Benson would sort into three piles; Nun Ainsty’s delivery, Meltonby’s delivery and the remainder returned to the van driver (who by that time would have finished his mug of tea) for delivery to outlying farms and cottages.

      At this time, usually, the night man – an ex-soldier from the Great War who looked after the switchboard from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. – was also ready for his mug of tea before leaving for home and bed. By this time, too, the bundle of morning papers would have been left on the front step by the conductor of the early-morning bus, which arrived in Meltonby at six-thirty and departed for York, and all villages between, at six forty-five.

      It was a cosy scene which Lorna enjoyed. She was a worker, now, and depended upon by the people of Ainsty for their morning papers, letters, and packets small enough to push through letterboxes. It gave her a feeling, if not of pride, then certainly of usefulness. It meant, too, that Mrs Benson, the night attendant and the driver of the post office van had become her friends. And friends were more important than ever in wartime.

      She sorted her pile of letters on the long narrow table, starting with Ladybower House, then Mary at the White Hart, then the Saddlery, which always had more mail than anyone else – except now, of course, the manor.

      The mail for the manor which since two weeks past was a military hospital, was kept to one side and secured with a rubber band. Eight assorted newspapers were folded and placed beside it. Since the twenty patients arrived, plus orderlies and a medical officer, the bundle was quite large and the order for newspapers grew larger each day.

      She called goodbye, placed letters and packets in the front basket of her cycle and newspapers in the back basket, waved to the driver and conductor of the red bus, and pedalled off.

      This morning, Lorna felt especially pleased because Pearl Tuthey at the Saddlery had been worrying about the lack of letters from her son Luke, away at sea. ‘I just don’t know what that ship of his can be up to, and that’s a fact.’

      Well now, Lorna smiled, Pearl would be more than pleased by five letters all at once from the younger of her twins on HMS Illustrious, and the worried look gone from her face. This morning, Lorna decided, she would bang extra hard on the brass knocker at the Saddlery to bring Pearl hurrying to pick up the post.

      No doubt about it, she liked being Nun Ainsty’s postlady; liked everything about her life except, she thought all at once serious, it would be nice to get more than one letter a week from William and just sometimes get a phone call from him, no matter how troublesome it was these days to get through. Just the occasional call, Lorna sighed, would be rather nice, though her husband had more to worry about than ringing up his wife. His army duties for one thing; his promotion not yet through for another. And he did write to her, actually, every day – something like a diary. Pity he saved it all to arrive each Saturday. Seven letters, if only to say Terribly busy, darling. Take care, Love you, love you … would have been much, much nicer than one chunk. But there was a war on and she was lucky; especially lucky when she thought, as she often did, about London and the terrible bombing in the south.

      An Army truck with a red cross on its side passed her, hooting cheekily, and she raised a hand in greeting. They rarely saw soldiers from the manor. Most of them, she had found, were learning to come to terms with lost limbs, and how to walk again or make do with one arm when you’d always had two. Terrible, to lose a limb, she frowned, stopping outside the White Hart. No letters for Mary this morning. She pushed the morning paper through the letterbox, bringing the knocker down once.

      She thought as she propped her cycle against the gatepost at the back of the manor, she could bet a shilling that the kitchen door would be opened by a cook with three stripes on the sleeve of his overall and that he would smile broadly and say,

      ‘Here she is, the love of my life! And how are you today, sweetheart?’ and to which she always replied,

      ‘I’m very well indeed, sergeant!’ returning his saucy grin with a wink. Only this morning she would have lost her shilling