Free Apple Blossom Time by Kathryn Haig Page A

usual – and wakes shouting out, in an awful sweat, and won’t be comforted. He turns his back on me and lies awake afterwards, fighting sleep, as though he’s afraid to lose control of his mind again. I feel so helpless.
    Abbie has (at last) consented to become Mrs Frank Horrell and runs the shop with the same vigour that she used to run us. Dear Frank, he may have got more than he bargained for! But Abbie is wonderful to us and Frank still slips round to the kitchen with ‘a little bit of something nice’. I don’t know what we’d do without them.
    Poor Mr Millport is looking rather frail. He misses Pansy dreadfully, of course, and, at his age, is finding getting round the parish rather a trial. I’m certain that he’d be allotted a petrol allowance if only he asked for one, but he won’t. His old Austin has been mothballed and put up on blocks for the duration. He calls it part of his war effort and has taken out something – I can’t remember what, something vital – so that the Germans won’t be able to get it started when they commandeer it (he says they definitely won’t have spares for English cars, so that’s all right – how reassuring!). He cycled right out to Thurlow’s farm last week to comfort Mrs Thurlow. Her second boy went down in the Atlantic and the poor woman is utterly distraught. It was a horrid day – absolute cats and dogs – so Mr Millport now has a nasty cough, but won’t go to bed. Perhaps you’d better not tell Pansy. He wouldn’t want her worried. On the other hand, she ought to know, but by the time you get this letter he will probably be better again. I leave it to you to decide.
    I think she really ought to come home. Her father can’t manage on his own much longer. I’m sure he’s not eating properly (but then, who would, with Mrs Attwood cooking?). Do you think she could get a discharge? Perhaps on compassionate grounds? He would be so cross if he knew I was writing this to you. Oh dear … what’s for the best?
    Grandmother has given up evacuees – much to her relief (the last bunch weren’t even housetrained). She had a terrific row with the billeting officer (Mrs Treadwell in a smart felt hat instead of her usual headscarf) about the state of the mattresses and told her, very concisely, where she could put the next bunch. But someone has to take the poor little mites …
    To be more exact, she has started taking in lodgers! I can’t name the aerodrome in a letter, but many of the young men stationed there are married and have nowhere for their wives to stay, either on a visit or permanently, certainly nowhere they can have some privacy. It’s all very sad and romantic. So Grandmother now has her beds almost constantly occupied by young wives (and sometimes girlfriends, but we won’t talk about that – Tom called her a high-class procuress the other day – quite uncalled for and I really mustn’t laugh!). I wonder how many of the next generation will have been begotten in Ansty House? But it’s heartbreaking if a husband fails to come back from a mission. Those poor girls. They need someone …
    Grandmother looks terribly chic in trousers and with her hair wrapped up in a turban – she looks younger than she has any right to be! She dashes around everywhere, chairwoman of this, secretary of that, on the committee of the other, putting me quite to shame. As if that wasn’t enough, she’s a dab hand at knocking elderly chickens on the head and skinning rabbits.
    I’ve been feeling a bit dreary and sorry for myself recently – not for any reason that I can think of. My fingers are so stiff from weeding carrots, all I can do on the piano is make beastly, Bartok-like noises. Maybe I’m coming up to that awkward time of life. What a horrid thought. Mustn’t grumble, grin and bear it, women always say, but I feel as though I’ve done quite enough grinning and bearing lately. A jolly good grumble would probably do me the world of good. Oh dear – how