Bobby's War Page 3

  Bobby’s life was one long list of aircraft, time constraints and weather problems, but it did mean she had little time to think, and the one thing Roberta Hollis, with the haunting memories of her strange upbringing and even stranger family, did not need was time to think.

  *

  Mathilda Hollis shaded her eyes against the weak November sun as she followed the path of a plane that was flying above Salhouse Farm, her home on the outskirts of Norwich. It vaguely occurred to her that it could be her daughter at the controls, but she shrugged her shoulders and carried on with her scissors, deadheading the one autumn rose that she had left. She looked round wistfully at the former rose garden, that was now planted with potatoes. Flowers were yet one more luxury she was deprived of by this war. She kept looking fearfully back at the red-bricked farmhouse she supposed was her home, nervous as always that she was doing something wrong.

  There was little sign of the dimple-cheeked, dark-haired beauty who had pierced the sangfroid of the reserved Andrew Hollis just before the Great War broke out. This was a deflated woman whose clothes hung off her once nicely-rounded figure and who wafted through the garden like a ghost, disconnected from the ground around her. In the privacy of the warm farmhouse kitchen, the cook, Mrs Hill, explained to any new staff that Mrs Hollis was ‘not well’, a term the family used to explain Mathilda Hollis’s distant stare, but everyone in the village knew that she had been like this since she had struggled to give birth to twins in 1915. In a dark bedroom on a cold April day, the last vestiges of that joyous young woman had been obliterated by the death of her and Andrew’s newborn son. The hurriedly summoned vicar had grabbed some water from the jug on the washstand to christen the child with the name Michael. Just a moment later, the doctor shook his head sadly and Mathilda heard a loud scream. She did not realise it came from her own mouth. On the other side of the room Mathilda’s sister, Agnes, was holding the other twin, a daughter, Roberta, who started to cry lustily.

  From that moment, Mathilda seemed to slip back into the shadows, leaving her sister in almost sole charge of the little girl. Agnes often thought that Roberta’s loud and relentless cries were simply to remind the family she was still there. Dressed as always in a pale grey, threadbare dress, with a buttoned-up collar, Agnes stood by the latticed drawing room window, watching the diminutive figure of her younger sister in the garden. She felt the usual mix of gloom and concern and frowned at the sight of Mathilda meandering next to the rose plant, clipping an odd stem randomly. Agnes bit her lip, hoping her fragile sibling would remember not to cut herself.

  It was a bright, early winter’s day and seeing a couple of men walking slowly past the stone gate at the end of the drive, Agnes thought back to another day in November 1919 when her brother-in-law had led a sparse group of village men home from the Great War. So much has changed, she thought, and yet not nearly enough.

  Chapter 3

  Bobby stood at the bottom of the drive to Salhouse Farm. She hesitated and then took a deep breath. This was her first trip home in weeks and she felt the familiar thumping of her heart at the sight of the large rambling eighteenth century building that always brought with it feelings of dread.

  The long, straight, gravel drive was guarded by two pillars with a round stone ball on the top of each one. Bobby had walked the short distance from the bus stop in the village to the farm. Once she got to the gate, she assessed the state of the farm in front of her. Everywhere leading up to the house looked overgrown and unkempt, a far cry from the pristinely-maintained farm of her childhood. The farm had always used local labourers but now most of them had been called up, some never to return, leaving only essential workers and a few Land Army girls, who had been drafted in when Bobby signed up.

  She looked towards the porch where, in 1919, she had fidgeted as a four-year-old in a stiff, new calico pinafore with a shiny yellow ribbon in her pigtails. She had been told the man who was going to arrive at the farm at ten to four that afternoon was her father. With no idea what a father should be like, she had relied on her story books, that always depicted them playing with their children, teasing and comforting them. Roberta had spent hours with her knees tucked up on the sitting room window seat imagining the moment when her very own father would return from the war, but once the sparse troop of men finally arrived, she was puzzled to see a stooped man peel off from the little group of bedraggled soldiers, looking nothing like the heroic figure she was expecting. His clothes were dirty, and his threadbare kitbag was thrown heavily over his bony shoulder. Bobby had wanted to hop up and down, but it soon became apparent that her daydreams of being tossed in the air by a delighted father were likely to be dashed, so she stood as quietly as the rest of them. The young child had vaguely registered his hair, which was exactly the same colour as her pigtails, but when he passed, he stopped to pat her on the head.

  Bobby closed her eyes for a moment, leaning gently against the pillar, feeling a constriction in her throat. It had been an unnatural childhood, she thought. Her father had practically ignored her and every time she tried to climb up onto her mother’s knee for a cuddle, the lap had been cold and her mother’s arms had gone rigid on either side of her upright body.

  ‘The mistress is like an Easter egg with its sugared almonds taken out,’ Bobby remembered hearing Mrs Hill whisper to Archie. That description was still sadly apt, she thought.

  Every time her mother saw her, she would gasp and then stare at the space behind Bobby, as if seeing a spectre from another world. It left Bobby with a feeling of crushing guilt that she had been the surviving twin and therefore to blame for all her family’s distress. Aunt Agnes disguised any feelings behind that high-necked collar of hers and as far as Bobby could remember, while her aunt had performed all the essential parenting, there had been no show of affection there either.

  Bobby marched determinedly up the drive, wondering when the chilling memories would ever fade, but then her frown broke into a smile as she spotted Archie the foreman, who had been with the family since he was a lad, coming round the side of the house.

  Catching sight of her, Archie waved in delight, remembering the child who had flinched at nothing during her childhood.

  ‘Bobby Hollis, ‘bout time you turned up. Too busy winning the war to visit us poor country folk, are you?’

  Bobby quickened her step and ran up to him to be clasped in an engulfing hug. Archie was a bull of a man with a mop of curly brown hair and a face that bore witness to a lifetime spent in the elements. He was strong and completely reliable and had dedicated his life to the family with a loyalty he might otherwise have given to a wife.

  ‘Oh Archie, it’s so good to see you. How are you? How’s . . . everyone?’

  He smiled at her hesitation. ‘Your father’s as . . . he always is . . . and your mother’s in her own world. Agnes, is, of course,’ he said with undisguised admiration, ‘holding the fort.’

  ‘Oh Archie, what would this family do without you?’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Oh, darn it, I’d love to stay for a long chat with you, Archie, but I’d better go in. I said I’d be here an hour ago but I had to wait for the taxi aircraft to get me to Bircham Newton and then it took ages to get a bus.’

  ‘You get along,’ Archie said, ‘or you’ll miss your dinner. They’re waiting for you.’

  Bobby groaned dramatically then grinned at him before going towards the house. She stopped with one foot poised on the step that led to the back-kitchen door and turned instead towards the little plot with iron railings at the side of the barn. In the plot were five or six marble headstones, all bearing the name Hollis. One was smaller than all the others with a stone angel, arms outstretched benevolently over the grave beneath. Above the grave was a large oak tree that had witnessed solemn funeral processions over three generations, none more sombre than the one for Bobby’s twin brother, when the whole village had gathered in their black Sunday best to watch the tiny coffin being lowered into the ground. Bobby turned towards the tre
e, spreading her fingers against the weak winter sunlight to form shadows like the fingers of the branches above, which were pointing accusingly at the grave below. She then turned around so that the tendril shadows pointed towards her and shivered.

  ‘Hello, Michael,’ she whispered, feeling the familiar inner conflict that always engulfed her when she confronted her twin’s death and her own survival. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been to see you for a while. It’s been busy.’ She stopped, as ever, not sure how to continue. ‘There’s a war, you know, like the last one when father was away. You’d have been in it, I suppose.’ The thought struck her that her brother might not have survived this war and she gasped. It was like losing him twice.

  Her hand clutched the cold, black railing around the grave, her knees weak and then she reached out to touch the headstone, willing it to give her the strength to go up to the house.

  The huge open sky of Norfolk spread above her. Her mind felt as vast and as empty. Bobby looked back at the grave and took a moment to gather her thoughts.

  The farm had always been a fixed point in her life but everywhere she looked, it seemed the buildings were looking down at her in disappointment, like the rest of the family. It was only when she had joined the ATA, that she had felt accepted on equal terms. When she was flying, she could escape the suffocating atmosphere of her home and she looked longingly at the unlimited horizons above her – how she yearned to be back up there rather than about to face the blank emotions of her family.

  Chapter 4

  Bobby went in the back door, stopping to pat Shep, the old sheepdog who slept there throughout the year, in summer’s heatwaves and winter’s frost, forcing everyone to step over him. He raised his head in weary greeting and then went back to sleep.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Hill, I’m home. Sorry I’m late.’

  ‘Well, you’ve just about made it, it’s good to see you,’ said the cook, who had known Bobby since birth. Rachel, the maid, was standing next to her smiling with delight to see the one person in the family who always had time for a chat with her. Her childhood polio had left her with a limp, allowing her to escape being called up. She had worked at the Hollis farm since the age of fourteen and felt more at home in the warm kitchen there than in the bleak rooms of her own home where her elderly, widowed mother complained about the unfairness of life from dawn to dusk.

  ‘How are you both?’ Bobby asked, giving Mrs Hill a hug.

  ‘Trying to make a gallon out of a pint as usual with this war,’ Mrs Hill moaned, waving her arms around the kitchen. ‘If these shortages go on much longer, I’ll be so emaciated, this pinny will go round me twice.’

  Bobby caught Rachel’s eye and they both smiled, looking sideways at the ample figure of the middle-aged cook in front of them who was trying unsuccessfully to pull the strings of her white pinny tighter.

  The kitchen was a large room with a window looking out onto the rows of vegetables that had replaced flower beds. All over Britain, flowers were frowned on as being an unnecessary luxury and the garden that had been the pride and joy of the young Hollis bride, had been given over to vegetables as part of the national ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign. The family was able to use some of the produce of the farm but the authorities were becoming stricter about how much they could supplement the decreasing rations that the nation was expected to live on and Mrs Hill found it a constant struggle to create interesting meals out of the miserable supplies of Spam, reconstituted egg and tiny amounts of cooking fat, with an occasional rabbit bagged by Archie from the fields. If she sometimes ‘adjusted’ the books as she called it, she was not going to apologise to anyone, let alone those men in their bowler hats with notebooks tucked under their arms who turned up on the farm from time to time.

  As she had done since childhood, Bobby had hopped up onto the draining board, preferring a cosy chat in her favourite place in the house to braving the atmosphere in the dining room, when the door opened and Aunt Agnes came in, her shoulders back and her head held high as usual. Here was a woman who had been trained to walk with books on her head to improve her deportment. As a child, Bobby had checked regularly to see if the books were still there.

  ‘Roberta! About time. You’re late, it’s past one; you’d better get in there. Your father’s been grumbling about you being late for the past twenty minutes.’

  Bobby shrugged at Mrs Hill, who gave her arm an affectionate pat. Aunt Agnes scrutinised her niece, sizing up the smartness of her uniform, belied by the mop of auburn hair that was tumbling loose around her shoulders. She watched Bobby bite her bottom lip and recognised the same nervous tendency she had seen in her as a little girl. Smiling to herself, she ushered her niece out through the kitchen door towards the formal dining room.

  The winter sunshine that burst through the enormous bay windows overlooking the garden almost blinded Bobby for a moment. The room looked the same, just a little more tired around the edges after three years of war. The patterned drapes had been supplemented by hastily-made blackout curtains and the three tapestry armchairs were frayed. There was a large, oblong oak dining table in the middle surrounded by high-backed chairs. Only two of the chairs at one end of the table were occupied, making the room look cavernous and empty. The fire was not lit and the room felt cold, despite the weak winter sun.

  ‘Ah, Roberta, finally,’ the austere tones of her father greeted her.

  ‘Hello, Father, Mother, how are you?’ Bobby sat down in her usual place further down the table and looked around at the familiar walls and furniture. These rooms had always seemed to echo with the unspoken thoughts of her family and, even now, she knew the words that would come out of her mouth would bear no relation to the thoughts in her head. Aunt Agnes came in behind her and put a warmed-up plateful of macaroni cheese in Bobby’s place, sitting next to her with her own dish of rice pudding.

  ‘Eat up,’ she said, ‘we’ve all eaten and are on dessert. You’re looking a bit thin.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Aunt, that looks lovely. How are you, Mother?’

  Mathilda Hollis looked nervously at her husband before speaking. It had been so many years since she had ventured to express an opinion of her own, she had almost forgotten how. ‘I’m fine, dear. Yes, f—’

  ‘How’s flying?’ her father butted in, ignoring his wife. Mathilda sat back, relieved to have the attention shifted away from her. ‘We seem to be getting a lot more coming overhead these days. Are they keeping you busy?’

  ‘Yes, very.’ Bobby thought about telling them all about the fourteen different types of planes she had flown in the last fortnight but decided, as usual, to keep her silence to avoid criticism or comment or worse, a lack of interest.

  ‘How’s the farm doing?’ she asked.

  Mathilda Hollis’s glance was darting around the faces at the table. She should have been delighted to see her daughter, but it always brought back so many painful memories of the year spent in the gloom of the bedroom above, engulfed in a grief so piercing in its cruelty that she had almost lost her mind. Even now, when she looked at Bobby, she felt a need to put her hand to her breast to stop her heart from breaking.

  ‘The cattle got a terrible price at market this morning with those damned controlled prices,’ her husband was saying. ‘Do you know how much I had to sell them for, Mathilda?’ His wife tried to look interested but immediately felt the panic that rose in her stomach with every word he had uttered since he came home from the war.

  The fact that she had committed the arch sin of not providing him with a male heir was exacerbated by the irony that there had been one, almost within reach, but she had killed it with her ill-shapen womb. It was all her fault and now she did not know the value of a cow.

  Agnes came to her rescue as usual. ‘I’m sure you got more than you did last month,’ she said. ‘That was the lowest price this year.’

  ‘Well yes, I suppose I did, but it was small consolation. I’ve nurtured and fed those animals and I’m hardly getting my money back. Of course, if Bobb
y had stayed at home, I wouldn’t have had to employ Jed. He can hardly walk with that leg of his. That would have saved me some money and those Land Army girls are less than useless. I wish I’d never spent money on those flying lessons.’

  Bobby interrupted to halt this habitual direction of conversation. ‘So, Father, have you heard about El Alamein? We’ve finally got the Germans on the run.’

  It was the one topic that would get her father away from the dire finances of the farm and the selfishness of his daughter and it worked like a charm. He spent the rest of the meal taking great delight in regaling the family with the shortcomings of Rommel and Bobby relaxed, finally feeling on safe ground.

  Mathilda Hollis could hardly finish her rice pudding and looked glumly at the watery contents of her bowl, stirring it absent-mindedly with her spoon, letting the conversation go over her head. She so wanted to join in but had forgotten how. She tentatively reached out her hand for a moment towards Bobby, but then when her daughter looked up, she withdrew it quickly.

  The rest of the meal went painfully slowly and Bobby could not wait to get out into the cold, fresh air after luncheon to escape the stifling atmosphere of the house. Every subject she brought up with her father seemed to prompt a fiery debate between the two of them and after spending ten minutes trying to persuade him that women were just as capable as men at piloting planes, she had given up and turned on her heels to leave him. She stood on the front porch and took a deep breath to calm down but then she spotted her aunt hurrying towards the woods, clutching a small posy. She looked curiously after her and then saw Archie, looking in the same direction, his garden fork in his hand.

  ‘Archie?’ she called. ‘Do you know where she’s going?’

  ‘It’s none of our business to be honest, Bobby, we should respect her privacy. Now if you’re at a loose end, come and help me dig this patch over before the frost.’