The Penny Bangle (7 page)

She had to stop herself from looking, staring, grinning like an idiot when Robert glanced her way, from talking to him when she didn’t need to say a word. He made it worse by helping her occasionally, by buying her a pair of boots which actually fitted when he went into Dorchester with Stephen, by stirring precious sugar into her morning coffee because he knew she liked it.

She’d never had a boyfriend and had never touched a man, except to shake his hand. But now she found she wanted to touch Robert, to run her fingers through his dense, dark hair, to stroke his forearm, to sidle up to him and brush against him.

Since he’d had that letter, he wasn’t sulking any more. In fact, he joked and whistled all day long, so she couldn’t even tell herself he was a miserable thing.

He’d always worked methodically, and he had more stamina than his brother, but now he worked much harder, obviously keen to get the place into good shape before he went away.

‘Look out, here comes the jolly farmer,’ Cassie said sarcastically, at the end of one cold, dismal day. Stephen, she and Frances were in the cottage porch, all pulling off their Wellingtons, and Robert was coming towards them from the barn.

It had rained incessantly all day, a freezing winter downpour that had soaked them through and through. Stephen had a streaming cold, Cassie had slipped over on a slick of muck and hurt her knee, and Frances had been kicked hard by a cow.

But Robert had been cheeriness itself, had told them to buck up and think of England, reminding them that moaning wasn’t going to beat the Jerries.

‘He’s worse than a Boy Scout,’ croaked Stephen, as he eyed his brother balefully. ‘Baden-Powell would be so proud of him.’

‘I’d have him shot,’ growled Frances.

‘What’s all this, then? Why the gloomy faces?’ Robert asked them, as he joined them in the porch and grinned encouragingly.

‘We can be gloomy if we like,’ said Cassie scowling and rubbing at the bruise on her sore knee.

‘But Cassie, if you smile, you’ll feel much better.’

‘Just listen to him,’ said Cassie sourly. ‘Well, Mr Ray of Sunshine,
you’ve
changed your bloody tune.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘What are you all arguing about?’ Mrs Denham came out of the cottage. ‘Supper’s ready now, so come and eat it while it’s hot. Frances, dear, your father phoned this afternoon to say he’s coming over in the car to take you home. Your mother doesn’t want you cycling back in all this rain.’

‘Why not, she’s waterproof,’ said Robert.

‘Shut up, Rob,’ growled Stephen, making Frances smile gratefully at him. ‘You’re driving everybody up the wall with all this we’re-British-and-so-we-can-tackle-anything routine.’

But Robert took no notice of his brother and became more cheerful and more boisterous day by day, reminding Cassie of a Labrador or other large and friendly dog which had too much energy and wore its owners out.

‘Put me down, you bugger!’ she gasped one supper-time, as Robert picked her up, then turned her upside down and carried her head first into the cottage.

‘You need to learn some manners, Cassie,’ Robert said, and laughed at her discomfiture. ‘You shouldn’t call me names. You shouldn’t say my singing’s like a crow with tonsillitis and always out of tune.’

As Cassie went on squawking, Mrs Denham came into the kitchen, and stared in disbelief. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing, Robert?’ she demanded. ‘Put Cassie down at once!’

Robert dumped Cassie sideways on a chair.

Cassie glared at him. But then she met his dark brown gaze, and thought, he’s the man who said I was a slinky glamour girl, who said that I was pretty, even when he didn’t want to like me.

‘You watch yourself,’ she muttered, aware that she was blushing like a pillar box. ‘You mind yourself, all right?’

‘Or you’ll do what?’ He grinned, then reached across and tweaked her hair, pulling a stray ringlet straight, then letting it spring back into a curl.

Cassie slapped his hand away and bared her teeth at him. ‘Something you won’t like, you wait and see.’

‘Robert, jolly well behave yourself,’ snapped Mrs Denham, putting an iron pot in front of Frances, who was having supper at the cottage. ‘If you’ve finished gawping at this pair of idiots, Frances, maybe you’d be good enough to serve, since they apparently can’t help themselves?’

Cassie found she couldn’t help herself.

She was watching Robert all the time. She hoped he wouldn’t notice she was looking, but also hoped that he would soon be taunting, teasing, even tipping her upside down and making Mrs Denham glare and frown at him again.

In church on Sundays, she listened to him singing. He was a good singer, in spite of what she’d said, and he was never out of tune. She didn’t know the hymns at first, of course, but after a few weeks at Melbury she got the hang of most of them and joined in with the others.

She supposed she shouldn’t really be in church at all. Or not in this one, anyway. When she’d first arrived in Melbury, she knew she should have asked where she could find the nearest Catholic church. But it was now a bit too late for that, and she soon decided it didn’t really matter anyway.

The service was peculiar, but she found she liked the words so much that she was mouthing them, telling herself that if she didn’t say the words out loud it didn’t count.

She somehow didn’t think that Father Riley would agree.

‘Daydreaming, are you, midget?’ Frances asked, as they polished harness one cold morning, Cassie rubbing it reflectively and wishing Robert would come and look for them, tell them to do something else, would speak to her again. It had been three hours or more since they had met at breakfast, and she wondered where he’d gone. ‘What’s the matter, Cassie?’

‘What?’ Cassie started guiltily. She rubbed the halter she was holding even harder, as if she was trying to polish it away.

‘Only you’ve just gone all red.’ Frances grinned. ‘I think you must be coming down with something.’

‘I hope I’m not.’ Cassie cleared her throat and also hoped she’d manage to sound casual and artless when she spoke again. ‘Where are the boys this morning?’

‘They’ve gone to Dorchester with Mr Denham. He had to see a lawyer about some access rights along the road going into Charton. Didn’t you hear them talking while we were having breakfast?’ Frances giggled. ‘Or were you in a daydream then, as well?’

Robert couldn’t wait until he was recalled to active service, could rejoin his unit, and could see his men again.

But he was reluctant to leave Melbury, his family and England – oh, and to leave Cassie too, a voice inside his head reminded him. You’re going to miss Cassie most of all.

Somehow, she had got inside his heart, inside his soul, and he didn’t quite know how or why. She wasn’t anything like the other girls he’d met at dances, girls with whom he’d flirted, girls he’d kissed.

Cassie was definitely not a flirt. She didn’t smirk, she didn’t stick her chest out, she didn’t stare at men with big, wide eyes. She didn’t do that thing with cigarettes – she didn’t lose her matches so men had to light her Woodbines while she gazed into their eyes, either looking soulful or ridiculous, depending on the girl. She didn’t smooth her skirt over her hips to draw attention to her shape.

She never traded on the fact she was a woman, and expect to be excused the heavier jobs, or helped to do her work.

She just got on with it.

As he lay in bed one night, just a matter of feet away from where she must be sleeping, he wondered what she’d feel like if he took her in his arms.

All bones and angles, he supposed – prominent shoulder blades and small, sharp elbows. These wouldn’t hesitate to jab him in the ribs if she thought he was trying to do anything he shouldn’t.

She wasn’t quite as skinny as when she’d first arrived. His mother’s cooking had succeeded in fattening her up – not very much, he had to admit. But she didn’t have the sort of figure which would ever put on any serious fat or muscle.

He’d met lads like Cassie when he had been in France. Boys from the big cities who were small and thin and hollow-chested, but who’d had lots of stamina and were not afraid of work. A couple of them had pulled him into that little boat when he had been wounded at Dunkirk.

Bob and Dave from Manchester, two wiry little blokes they’d been, and they had saved his life. If Cassie had any brothers or male cousins, he was sure they’d be like Dave and Bob.

He lit a cigarette and stared up at the ceiling, which was washed by moonlight. She was just a girl, he thought, a cheeky, forward, gobby little madam who happened to be a damned good worker, too.

He blew a smoke ring, watched it drift across the room. He didn’t understand it, but he found he wanted to be close to Cassie Taylor.

He was very tired tonight, but knew he wouldn’t sleep.

‘You’re looking rather bleary-eyed this morning,’ Frances told him, as they went in for breakfast after they had milked the cows.

‘He’s sickening for something,’ Stephen said.

‘No, I’m not,’ said Robert.

‘You probably need a dose of castor oil.’

‘Shut up, Steve,’ said Robert testily.

‘Cassie, what do you think?’ Frances asked. ‘Castor oil or Epsom salts, which would you recommend?’

Cassie glanced at Robert, blushed and turned away.

‘She’s coming down with something, too,’ said Frances, as she grinned at Stephen. ‘Whatever could it be?’

‘I wonder,’ Stephen said.

As the day wore on, Robert took every opportunity to brush her arm with his, to hold her steady as she climbed the ladder to the hay loft, to help her tack the pony up, to be back to back with Cassie while they did the evening milking, smelling her delicious Cassie scent of soap and something else which he could not identify, but which made him want to touch her, hold her – kiss her on her pretty little mouth?

He couldn’t help but tease her, taunt her, make her call him names, and he’d grown to love the sweet sensation as his heart beat faster when she grinned at him.

He told himself repeatedly that he liked the girl because she worked so hard and didn’t grumble. But he knew this wasn’t the whole story.

Maybe it was just as well he’d soon be going away.

The weather was getting gradually warmer, and the evenings lighter.

It didn’t get dark until long after all the work was done, so Cassie had time to go for a walk after she’d had her supper, to sit on a stile and daydream, or stroll along the headland and watch the waves roll up on to the beach.

The seascape was so huge, so vast that she could hardly take it in. Sometimes, the waves were angry, with foam-flecked breakers crashing like thunder on the shingle beach. But, on other days, it was all so peaceful that it almost made her cry, to think there was a war going on, and people were doing awful, ugly things, when God had made the world so beautiful.

The shingle beach itself was out of bounds. All along the tide-line there were tank traps, concrete bollards and thickets of barbed wire, for when the Germans came.

But did they mean to come?

‘I doubt it, Cass,’ said Robert, who’d just happened to join her as she walked along the headland one clear evening. ‘Of course, they should have followed us as we came home from France. They could have walked it, back in 1940. We couldn’t have stopped them even if we’d tried. But things are different now.’

He turned to Cassie, who hoped she wasn’t blushing, because she knew he’d tease her if she blushed. ‘Cass, you’re different, too. You look much better these days. There are roses in your cheeks, and you’ve put on a bit of weight. I’ll swear you’ve grown an inch or two, as well! Do you like being a land girl?’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Cassie. ‘I thought it would be boring. But most days, it’s fun. I love the chickens and the cows. I don’t know if I’ll stay in Melbury for the whole duration. I’d like to see a bit more of the world. But, one day, I’ll come back to work in Dorset.’

‘You mean, work on a farm?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘No reason, Cassie, so don’t look at me like that, all narrow-eyed and all suspicious.’ Robert smiled and Cassie’s heart did cartwheels of delight. ‘I was only asking.’

‘All right, but it’s time I was getting back again,’ she told him. ‘I need to write a letter to my granny before I go to bed.’