A small man, Walter Cross watched their arrival from beneath the peak of his cloth cap, his eyes hard in his narrow face.
‘You took your time. What’s the matter with you? Having a holiday?’
Annie shook her head. It wasn’t a question that required answering.
‘You’ll have to do the milking. I still haven’t got that blasted tractor to work. Don’t know what you’ve gone and done to it,’ her father said.
‘Right,’ Annie said.
It was no use pointing out that the tractor had failed while he’d been driving it. After all, everything that went wrong round here was her fault. Hers or Bobby’s.
‘And make sure that brat of yours helps. Cold, indeed! I never heard the like. Never got colds in my day. Get the little bastard working. That’ll soon cure him.’
Walter glared in the direction of the child, who stood in the yard entrance, his frightened eyes flicking from his mother to his grandfather. Walter grunted.
‘Bad blood,’ he muttered.
Annie’s self-control snapped. ‘He’s your grandson!’
Her father’s mouth stretched into a grim smile. He had provoked her. Satisfied, he turned to trudge across the yard to where the tractor stood under an open-sided shelter.
‘Make sure it’s all scrubbed down proper after. No skiving off early. I’ll be checking to see you’ve done it right, mind,’ he warned over his shoulder.
Annie said nothing. Walter stopped and slowly looked back at her. Behind her, Annie heard Bobby give a small whimper of fear.
‘You heard what I said?’ he demanded.
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘Good.’
His absolute authority assured, Walter walked on.
‘Pig,’ Annie muttered under her breath. ‘Bully. Schweinhund.’
She had learnt that one from the pictures. It gave her particular pleasure. She repeated it with as guttural a German accent as she could manage.
At least the milking was inside. Annie and Bobby went about the well-worn routine—feeding, washing udders, fixing on the cups. Without Walter there criticising their every move, they could almost enjoy it. Bobby sniffed and sneezed but worked manfully. He was only seven, but he was a well-seasoned assistant.
‘When I was little,’ Annie told him, ‘we did all this by hand. It took ages, even though we didn’t have so many cows then.’
Like Bobby, she had had to help from an early age. She could hardly remember a time when she hadn’t laboured on the farm.
‘Did they like you doing it by hand?’ Bobby asked. ‘The cows?’
Annie thought about it.
‘Yes. I think so. But you had to do it properly, or they’d kick you, or knock the bucket over.’
‘I bet he didn’t like that.’
‘No, he didn’t.’
The long day wasn’t yet over. The cows had to be turned into their pens and the dairy scrubbed down. Then there were the pigs to feed and hens to shut up for the night. By the time they had finished, Bobby’s teeth were chattering. Annie fished a handkerchief out of her pocket and held it over his nose.
‘Blow,’ she told him.
He blew.
‘That feel better?’
He nodded.
Annie put an arm round his shoulders and gathered him to her. He hugged her hips, nestling his balaclaved head against her. She glanced over to where her father was still leaning over the tractor engine with a spanner in his hand. She knew better than to go in without clearing it with him.
‘We’re finished, Dad,’ she called across the yard.
He didn’t let them go in straight away, but that was normal. Instead he found fault in their cleaning of the milking parlour. But when that was finally done to his satisfaction, they all went inside.
Marsh Edge farmhouse was a square plain brick building with a parlour, large kitchen, a scullery and an outside toilet downstairs and two large and two small bedrooms upstairs. The only room in the house that was heated was the kitchen, and it was there that they lived. It was hardly a model of comfort. The floors were stone-flagged, the walls whitewashed. A wooden sink and some shelves were built under the window, a green-painted dresser and some deal cupboards stood against one of the walls, a plain scrubbed table occupied the middle of the room with four stick-back chairs round it, while two Windsor carver chairs and a settle were set round the rag rug in front of the blackleaded range. The only clues that this was 1953 rather than 1903 were the big brown wireless on top of one of the cupboards, and the single electric light bulb under its red shade in the centre of the room.
Plain as it was, the kitchen seemed a haven of light and warmth after the raw cold of the yard. Annie and Bobby left their macs and wellingtons in the porch and washed their hands in the scullery. Edna Cross welcomed them in.
‘You poor things; you must be frozen. How’s my poor boy? That cold any better? Here, come and get warm by the range. I’ll open the front up …’
Edna was an older version of her daughter, small and round-faced with a turned-up nose, but years of hard work, poor health and marriage to Walter had etched lines into her pretty face, and made her painfully thin rather than slender. Her narrow hands were red and rough and the hair that had once been fair and naturally wavy was limp and colourless. She had long ago given up any idea of being anything but a drudge.
‘Is he coming?’ she asked Annie, with a motion of her head towards the yard.
‘I think so.’
‘I’ll do the toast, then. Can you make the tea, love?’
Annie shifted the big black kettle from where it was simmering on the side of the range to the hot spot in the middle, while her mother threaded a thick slice of bread on to the toasting fork. Bobby crouched on the rug, warming himself like a cat.
‘He got that tractor fixed?’ Edna asked.
‘Not yet.’
Neither of them made any further comment. It went without saying that his failure would not improve Walter’s temper. Edna’s hand shook a little as she held the toasting fork. Walter came in and the meal was put on the table—toast and dripping followed by scones and gooseberry jam, washed down by plenty of tea. The lack of conversation was disguised by the measured voices of the BBC announcers on the Home Service.
The evening passed like a hundred others. Annie put Bobby to bed and then sat by the range knitting him some socks. Walter read the local paper with the odd comment on the stupidity of one person or another while Edna hand-worked buttonholes in a rayon blouse for one of her customers. They listened to Saturday Night Theatre on the wireless. The weather forecast warned of continuing gales.
‘There’s a spring tide tonight and all,’ Walter said.
Edna looked fearful.
‘Spring tide and a gale? Will we be safe?’
‘Don’t talk daft, woman,’ Walter scoffed. ‘Wind’s offshore. If anyone gets it, it’ll be them Dutchies. Very low-lying, Holland is. Much more’n here.’
Annie made cocoa and put the porridge pot to simmer on the range, then there was the ritual of locking up before they went upstairs. Annie undressed as quickly as possible in her freezing bedroom and put on a flannelette nightie that came up to her neck and down to her ankles while on her feet she wore woolly socks.
Before getting into bed, she held back the curtain and took a quick peep outside. Way across the fields was the dark line of the sea wall, the place where