Free Shadow on the Land by Anne Doughty Page B

could keep going if the war went on much longer. It had been bad enough at times these last three years with shortages and the endless problems at the mills, but now there was one more worry, Johnny was out there too, withhis sisters, learning to fly, which could only lead to certain danger, wherever it might happen to be.
    Three long years since that morning when they’d stayed at home from church knowing there was going to be a broadcast on the wireless at eleven o’clock. They’d listened in silence and then, as soon as Mr Chamberlain finished, Alex said he thought she should phone Cathy. So she had. Cathy had cried, because she knew Brian would be called up.
    But, of course, in the end, Brian had been reserved, the last thing either he or Cathy had expected.
    Perhaps she should try to remember that so far none of her worst nightmares had come true. Worrying about any of her family wasn’t going to get her anywhere. It might even make her ill and how would Alex cope then, with all he had on his plate.
    She filled the kettle and made herself a cup of tea. She’d sit in the conservatory with the flowers that weren’t rain-battered and rotten and read her book for an hour. Then, this afternoon, wet or dry, she’d go out and pick some peas for Mary Cook and take them down to her when she went for the milk.
     
    She’d done exactly what the Dig for Victory pamphlet said she should and planted her peas and beans every three or four weeks instead of all at once. The residues of the first rows had long since shrivelledon the compost heap, but the later plantings were now heavy with fresh green pods. To her surprise, the rain had held off and now a few gleams of sun came to dry the still damp foliage and to create little pools of quicksilver where tiny drops of water lay in the broad leaves of cabbage and rhubarb.
    She gathered what she needed for Mary Cook and their own supper, and then decided to pick some more for her old friend, Dolly Love, in Dromore. Dolly might be feeling just as low as she had felt, for her Tom had gone last week. What a pity it was that Tom, and Johnny’s best friend Ritchie, only a couple of weeks younger than Johnny himself, had all been sent to different training camps though they had applied at the same time and hoped to be together.
    Emily might well have gone on pulling out weeds and thinking her own thoughts long after the peas were picked had it not been for the sound of a car on the hill. At the sudden vibration on the now warm air, she straightened up, stretched her back and listened.
    It
did
sound like Alex all right, but she couldn’t remember when he’d last arrived home at four o’clock in the afternoon. Moments later, she heard his car swing into the avenue, out of sight behind the flourishing hedge.
    She arrived back in the yard just as he slowed round the corner of the house and stopped.
    ‘We have a visitor,’ he said, grinning as he caughtsight of her Wellington boots. ‘Do you want me to head him off and bring him in by the front door?’ he asked, as she caught the sound of another vehicle on the hill.
    But before she’d had time to consider this possibility a jeep with the big white star of the U.S. Army on its bonnet swooped down the avenue and pulled up sharply behind Alex’s Austin, a flutter of fallen leaves caught up on the wheels settling gently to the ground.
    ‘Major Hicks, how lovely to see you,’ said Emily with a great beaming smile.
    ‘And you too, ma’am,’ he said, dropping down from the driver’s seat and holding out a large hand. ‘I don’t know when I last saw a lady in muddy boots. Makes me homesick for Vermont.’
    ‘Major Hicks has come to consult you, Emily,’ said Alex, a twinkle in his eyes.
    ‘Now, Alex, this won’t do,’ the tall American protested. ‘I may be on official business, but I will not be called Major Hicks standing in your backyard. The name is Christopher, but no one except my Ma calls me that. So Chris it is. And you