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Chapter 3

A tractor with a hay trailer stood in the country lane. The casualties from the train disaster: the walking wounded and those too shocked to speak, were hauling their aching and battered bodies up onto the trailer. Freddie Finch, a large, avuncular man in his late forties, was helping them. Although ‘helping’ was a generous term for just telling them to mind they didn’t snag anything on the lip of the trailer as they crawled up. Finch wouldn’t stretch himself to help anyone physically, on account of his bad back; a condition that had oddly resisted any medical diagnosis and which seemed to move to different areas of his spine according to his memory.

“Mind your step. That’s it,” he said with a nervous chuckle as a young soldier climbed up. Finch glanced back at the surreal sight of the train and its carriages sprawled across a large area of grassland. The fire fighters had arrived and were trying to extinguish a blaze in the middle section. Some distance away, a large group of passengers were huddled together, being treated by a few village doctors and nurses. Some soldiers were building a pile of luggage as they recovered what they could from the wrecked train.

“I was just saying I wished you’d pick us up. And here you are.”

Finch looked round to the sound of the voice. It was Joyce Fisher, bruised and suffering some small lacerations to her face, but otherwise all right. She’d recovered from the shock of what had happened and found her voice. She had a hair pin in her mouth and was busy tidying her hair as she walked towards the trailer.

“I’m like the genie of the lamp.” Finch giggled.

“Mind you, didn’t think I’d have to go through all this to get a lift.”

Finch beamed a large grin. “Thank heavens you’re all right. That’s the main thing, eh?”

He plucked her from the ground and spun her round – chuckling with relief.

Joyce winced. Finch put her down awkwardly.

“Bruises.” Joyce grimaced.

“Sorry, got carried away!” Finch chuckled. Realising that he was being watched by rows of blank eyes on the trailer, he placed his thick fingers on his lower back as it twinged with pain. “Overdone it.”

Frederick Finch gave bed and board to Joyce – as well to Esther Reeves, the Land Girls’ warden, her teenage son and three other Land Girls. Within the boundaries of the Hoxley estate, Pasture Farm sported a homely and quaint little cottage in its vast expanse of fields and outbuildings. Before the war, it had just been home to Finch and his young son Billy, but now Billy had gone away to fight and the house was rammed full of new people, the vibrant chatter and noise making it once more not just a house but a home. Finch enjoyed having the house feel so alive, full of strangers who became friends. It reminded him of before. It reminded him of when his wife was there, the fire roaring as she laid on feasts for their friends, a house full of laughter.

As Finch watched Joyce get up onto the hay trailer, he poked a stubby finger in the air and counted how many people he had on board. Joyce hid her amusement that Finch’s mouth moved while he counted.

Reaching a tally in his head, Finch frowned. Someone was missing.

“Where’s Connie?”

Nearer the wreckage, the young nine-year-old girl with blonde curls was wrapped in a blanket as the village doctor, Dr Wally Morgan, checked her leg for injury. He was a well-meaning but often drunken man in his fifties; a man unused to having to use his limited medical knowledge on such a scale.

“How’s that?” Wally asked, manipulating her ankle.

The girl winced. He’d got his answer.

“Point your toes to the ground. Can you do that, dear?”

The girl tried her best. Her foot was moving fairly well. “Hurts a bit, I think.”

“I don’t think it’s broken,” Wally said, tapping her shoulder by way of closure as he got to his feet. He plucked up his medical bag, ready to move to the next patient. “Probably just a bad bruise. It’ll go a pretty old purple over the next day or so, I’ll wager.”

Wally Morgan scanned the huddles of patients and helpers, deciding where to go next. This was a lot more activity than he was used to as a village doctor. He was already feeling that he’d reward himself with a drink or two tonight. This felt like proper war work, a step above looking at Mrs Gulliver’s bunions. Wanting an easy win, he managed to ignore a man with a twisted leg and set off to see a young man who had a bleeding temple.

As she’d stood in the wrecked doorway, smoke billowing out around her, Connie Carter had felt the searing heat of the fire on her back. It felt as though it was already burning though her Land Army sweater; angry orange tendrils trying to fry her skin. The heat could overcome her at any time and topple her, unconscious, back into the burning carriage. That would be the end of it. As she stood there, it only took a fraction of a second, but for Connie the moment stretched out forever. She gripped the sides of the doorway, her boots crossing the threshold. A clump of mud fell from one boot. Dimly she thought of the station master at Brinford with his broom and his short temper.

“Mind you don’t mess up my burning train.”

A bloom of black smoke belched from the back of the carriage and engulfed Connie, pulled past her into the fresh air. There wasn’t enough air to breathe. Connie felt herself totter, woozy, losing focus. She steadied herself, blinking to try to clear her head. More smoke rushed past her. It was getting harder to breathe, the air dry and somehow thin. She tried to focus and force herself forward. But her fuzzy brain suddenly couldn’t work out which way was forward. Even though the opening was inches in front of her, she was disorientated and looking around for the way. But the black smoke was rushing past her, like a biblical plague of suited commuters. She couldn’t see anything, even though logic should have told her to follow the direction the smoke was heading in. Towards the air. But logic wasn’t working.

Connie swooned, almost fell. There was nothing left in her lungs. She couldn’t see and all she could hear was the rush of smoke and the crackle of burning wood somewhere in the distance.

A gust of wind saved her life.

Outside the carriage, the wind poked a brief hole in the billowing blackness that was exiting the door. For a moment, Connie could see a soldier sitting on the grass in the distance, a man in shock being treated by a nurse.

She knew she had to head in that direction.

The flames staged one last attempt to grasp her, but Connie launched herself from the doorway, following the brief glimpse of light she’d seen. Her lungs were gasping as she fell in a heap on the ground. Looking behind, she saw tall flames consuming the carriage, dancing, blowing the glass out from the windows. One second longer and she would have been overcome with smoke and she would have collapsed into that inferno.

It had been a narrow miss.

Connie sobbed in relief and took hungry mouthfuls of air. Each breath made her hack up the acrid smoke that had tried to take over her lungs. It took several minutes before she could speak, and even as she got her voice back, the coughing would be there to remind her of her lucky escape.

Now Connie Carter sat on the grass drinking tea from a mug. Some villagers had lit a fire and were boiling a kettle to provide hot drinks for the wounded. The tea was weak and milky but it hit the spot. Connie noticed the young girl from the carriage and moved over towards her.

“How you feeling?” Connie asked.

“All right. Your face is all black.”

Connie laughed. She hadn’t seen herself, but she supposed that it would be. Certainly a thin smear of greasy soot covered her arms and hands. It probably caked some of her face too. She offered the mug. “Want some tea? It’s weaker than a kitten, but it hits the spot.”

The girl shook her head. “Not allowed tea. But thank you.”

“What’s your name?”

“Margaret Sawyer,” the girl replied.

“I’m Connie Carter. Well, Connie Jameson. Keep forgetting. Married.” Connie reached into her pocket and pulled out the parchment parcel. She opened it up, considered eating it, but then offered the piece of cheese to the girl. “Do you good to eat something, you know.”

The girl looked uncertain. Connie wondered whether she had been told not to take things from strangers.

“It’s all right. Your mum’s over there. And I’m a vicar’s wife.”

Margaret overcame her reticence and took it. She gobbled it down, taking another chunk before the first one was swallowed. Connie was surprised at how ravenous she seemed. “Blimey, doesn’t your mum feed you?”

“She’s not really my mum,” Margaret said.

But before Connie could enquire further, they were interrupted. It was the portly man with the trilby hat and the camera that Connie had seen at Brinford station.

“Hello, ladies,” he wheezed. “I’m Roger Curran from The Helmstead Herald.”

“About time someone told us what was going on,” Connie replied. “Why did the train come off the tracks like that, then?”

Roger was slightly wrong-footed. “No, I was hoping to ask you some questions.”

“Well I don’t know nothing,” Connie said.

Margaret, with a mouthful of cheese, stifled a giggle at their exchange.

“They think there was an explosive on the line,” Roger said in a hushed voice, hoping that the explanation might enable him to get on with his line of questioning.

“What, the Germans?”

Roger didn’t know. The bomb could have been planted by Nazi sympathisers or communists or any group allied with the German cause. There had been several instances of terrorism in Helmstead and the surrounding areas in the last few months. The air base at Brinford had been bombed mercilessly in a raid by German bombers, and while that action wasn’t terrorism, most locals thought someone had tipped off the secret location of the base to the enemy. And a sympathiser had even been shot dead at Hoxley Manor when Lady Ellen Hoxley had discovered him transmitting secret messages from the stables. The enemy was closer than anyone wanted …

Roger Curran explained that an explosive had been detonated as the train engine went across the track. The bomb must have been on a timer. It would have been common knowledge that, due to its proximity to the air base, the evening Brinford train would have had a large number of military personnel on board.

Connie hid her shock. Part of her had hoped the crash had been the result of a random accident. A rock on the line or something. It was terrifying to think that someone, or some group, was behind it. Terrifying that it was an act of war.

“Anyway, tell me what happened to you,” Roger said, pulling out a small notebook. He licked the end of his pencil and poised it over the page to write. Connie didn’t understand why people licked pencils. What was the point of that?

Connie wasn’t sure she wanted to tell the story, playing down any suggestion that she had been heroic. But, despite her efforts at modesty, Margaret piped up:

“She saved my life. She saved the lives of everyone in our compartment. She was brilliant.”

Connie blushed. She tried to downplay it, but was reluctantly forced to reveal that this was more or less the truth. She related the tale of what happened and Roger took a few pages of notes, his smiles of encouragement becoming more frequent. He sensed this was a good story for his paper. It might even give him his first front page since the Land Girls’ Tractor Race. He ended by asking Connie where she lived. Proudly Connie told him that she lived at the vicarage with her husband.

“This will be a lovely piece for the paper. ‘Vicar’s Wife Saves Lives’,” Roger said. Then he turned to the young girl. “And where do you live?”

“I don’t know if I should say,” Margaret replied, offering a worried glance in the direction of where the middle-aged woman was.

“It’s all right,” Connie encouraged.

“Jessop’s Cottage,” Margaret admitted, hesitantly.

As Roger tried to place it, Margaret informed him that it was in the middle of a valley, miles from anywhere. The nearest landmark was Panmere Lake and Helmstead was the nearest town. Roger couldn’t place it.

“Don’t worry. Nobody knows it. Nobody comes there.”

“Not even your friends?” Connie asked.

Margaret shook her head quickly, keen to close down all these intrusive questions.

As Connie mulled this over, Roger unhooked his camera from around his neck and started to frame a shot of Connie and Margaret.

“Perhaps, if you don’t mind getting closer …?” Roger said, wafting his hand for them to scrunch together.

Connie and Margaret shuffled closer over the grass – Margaret still wrapped in her blanket. They smiled weary smiles for the camera.

Roger clicked the trigger. “Cheese!”

He let the camera bounce back onto his ample stomach.

“Thank you, ladies.”

And then he tipped his hat and moved to another group. Even though he knew their story would take some topping. “Excuse me, I’m Roger Curran from The Helmstead Herald.”

Connie turned to Margaret. “How you feeling?”

Margaret looked subdued and thoughtful. Connie tried to cheer her up. “Here, I let him take my photograph and I was covered in soot.”

“It’s all right. So was I.” Margaret laughed. A nurse came over and helped Margaret to her feet.

“Your mum is being taken to the hospital. She’ll be fine. But we need you to come as well,” the nurse said.

Margaret looked back at Connie. The unhappy look had returned to the young girl’s face. Connie felt concerned. What was she going back to? Why did no one ever go to the little girl’s house?

“Thanks again,” Margaret said.

“Take care.” Connie watched the young girl as she was marshalled away. And then she was aware of Finch waving at her to get a move on. He wanted to leave now. Tipping the last remnants of her tea away, Connie picked herself up and scurried up the bank towards the waiting tractor.

When she reached it, the trailer was nearly full and people were shivering as dusk turned to night. As she hauled herself up, Connie was surprised to see John Fisher sitting next to Joyce. It turned out he had been on the train after all, squeezed into a carriage further down, just as Joyce had predicted. John had become a navigator for the RAF until he was shot down in France. The experience had been traumatic and he had left active duty soon after his recovery. Now he worked at Brinford Air Base as a clerk, his flying days over (to Joyce’s immense relief).

“I saw Finch before I saw Joyce,” he admitted.

“Flaming cheek,” Joyce joked.

“He probably blocked her out. Like one of them eclipse things,” Connie said.

Finch, at the front of the tractor with a starting handle, popped his head up. “’Ere! You can walk if there’s any more of that.”

Connie sat with Joyce and John as Finch cranked up the tractor.

It spluttered to life.

“Right, anyone not got a ticket? It’s tuppence each for the ride.” He chuckled, knowing full well that he was going to get a barracking for his cheek. But you couldn’t blame a man for trying.

“With your driving, you should be paying us!” Connie replied.

“One more insult and you’re out, Connie Carter!”

Everyone laughed, enjoying the catharsis of letting it out after the trauma they had faced. This was the Blitz spirit. You could bomb these people, derail their trains, take their homes, but they would still end up laughing, somehow.

The tractor set off on its bumpy and languorous journey back to Helmstead. And while others were looking back at the wreckage of the train as it faded into the distance, Connie was thinking about the young girl she had saved and hoping that she would be all right.

Connie strode through the village square as starlings swooped like Spitfires in the darkening sky. Her feet had gone numb from her heavy boots, but she dreaded taking them off in case she couldn’t put them on again. She had visions of her feet swelling up like barrage balloons as soon as she unstrapped them from their straining prisons.

There was light and laughter coming from the Bottle and Glass pub as she passed it. Two GIs were hanging around outside, smoking and drinking in the late-evening air. One of them gave Connie an approving glance, but Connie wasn’t in the mood for any harmless flirty chit-chat. Not tonight. After what she’d been through, she just wanted to get home.

The church stood on the horizon at the end of the village. And next to it was the small white cottage that she called home. Getting used to married life hadn’t been as easy as she’d hoped. Their courtship had been a whirlwind of fun and romance; Connie enjoying how Henry would get tongue-tied and embarrassed at her antics. But those playful differences that seemed attractively engaging during the carefree stages of their relationship, now were weighed down by the seriousness of her wedding vows. Couldn’t she be more responsible? Couldn’t he just loosen up a little? And one month in, they were still finding their roles in that marriage; both desperate to make it work, but both feeling out of their depth. Connie had no idea how a marriage was supposed to work. She was fumbling for the answers as she went along, while trying to fit into the new order. The regimentation of living with someone, respecting their routine. It was all new. Well, it was all new in that it mattered this time. She’d lived with a man before, but that was different. It was something she didn’t want to think about. It felt like sullying what she had with Henry to even think about that.

Added to this difficult process of discovery was the hardship of wartime. It was tough having to wake up and go to work before her new husband was even awake. Most days Connie would get out of bed at five, kiss her slumbering, groggy husband goodbye and then tip toe across the cold floorboards into the bathroom to change into her WLA uniform. She’d put on her shirt, strap her braces over her shoulders as she hauled her heavy britches up – all the while hoping she wouldn’t wake Henry. Then she’d grab something to eat and go out into the crisp dewy air, staring at the new day’s clouds and walk to Pasture Farm – the place she had lived with the other Land Girls before she got married.

But that would be tomorrow morning. For now, Connie had reached the front door of the cottage. The place she called home.

She pushed it open.

Henry Jameson was standing in the corridor. A young man with a flicked fringe, dog collar and a permanent air of endearing bewilderment. Henry looked surprised to see her. But he didn’t have any time for questions as Connie pressed him to the wall, sending a small engraving of Our Lord clattering off its hook to the floor in the process, and planted a smacker right on his lips.

“Gawd, I’ve missed you, ‘Enry,” she said. “Thought I’d never see you again.”

She was about to kiss him again when she noticed that three old women were also standing in the corridor. In their neat floral dresses, they looked shocked at the sight they were witnessing. All three clutched their handbags like protective talismans.

“I was just showing the ladies from the WI out,” Henry stammered.

Connie mustered up a smile that would befit her status as a vicar’s wife. “I ain’t seen him all day,” she muttered by way of explanation.

Henry opened the front door for Mrs Arbuthnott, Mrs Fisk and Mrs Hewson to make their way out. They left in constrained silence. Connie and Henry waved a cheery goodbye wave and when it was socially acceptable, Henry quickly closed the door.

And then Connie burst out laughing. The sound caught in her throat when she realised that she was laughing alone. Henry frowned and walked into the living room.

In a stilted atmosphere, Connie related the events of the train disaster as she chased the last remnants of sausage and cabbage from her plate. Henry ate his dinner and replied that he’d heard nothing about the crash, but then he had been trapped most of the evening with Mrs Arbuthnott, Mrs Fisk and Mrs Hewson discussing the morality of rationing. The two of them ate by candlelight, as they always did, the meal complimented by conversation about their days. But tonight, she felt like a scolded child.

For Connie, the evening meal was usually the highlight of her day: a chance to talk about their working days and share a laugh together, before going upstairs for a bath and bed. Neither of them had the energy to stay up late so normally they’d be wrapped in each other’s arms by nine or ten at the latest. But tonight, it was already half-ten because of the extraordinary events of the train crash.

And there was an awkwardness, a sombre reflective air in the room.

Connie couldn’t take any more. Feeling contrite for showing up Henry in the eyes in of his parishioners, she was also annoyed she was being put through this.

“I thought you’d be more pleased I wasn’t dead,” she said bluntly.