90

The report came through from the War Ag. We’d passed with flying colours. There’d been a few comments on areas for improvement which had Bill Taylor fuming, but it was an excuse for celebration, time to enjoy what we’d all achieved.

We set out a marquee in the meadow. A band, a barrel of beer. Pushed the boat out. Everyone who’d helped with the harvest was there.

Almost everyone.

Mum made a cake, one of many. The women brought sandwiches and the men brought jugs of home-brewed drinks. Doc, still waiting to receive his mobilisation orders, tended bar. We sat on picnic rugs on the grass, as the invasion took place above our heads.

The sky was an abstract painting of swirling white lines. The first day had been gripping. The second day a curiosity. Now, on day five, it was scenery. According to the papers, the bombers’ targets had been our airfields at the start, as German High Command had sought to neutralise our air power, but yesterday the headlines had changed – civilian targets bombed. The horror we’d all been expecting since the first day of the war had finally arrived.

‘There’s another one,’ Frankie said, pointing at a growing shape in the sky to the south, over the Downs. A parachute. A pilot, who’d bailed out before his plane hit the ground.

Frankie pulled out a notebook from his gas mask box. He kept score as best he could. He was up to eight parachutes and ten planes down, all within sight of our farm. How many more tally marks would go in his little book before the end? How many more years of war? Frankie was ten. Would we still be fighting by the time he was old enough to do his bit?

I stood up, brushing crumbs from my trousers, and shook hands with a new arrival. Milosz, the Polish soldier. He was wearing a crisp, new army uniform, and had a young lady on his arm.

‘They took you on?’ I asked.

‘They said they could do with the manpower.’ He looked up at the sky and spoke quietly. ‘It’s not going so good as they say on the BBC.’

I smiled at the young lady on his arm.

‘Miss,’ I said.

‘This is Edith,’ Milosz said. ‘Edith, my friend John Cook. Edith’s a barmaid. She says I’m her favourite customer.’

‘What do you do, Mr Cook?’ she asked.

‘I’m a farmer,’ I said.

‘Don’t you want to get more involved?’ she asked. ‘Do your bit?’

I squinted in the sun and smiled.

‘I’ll leave that to the young chaps,’ I said, clapping Milosz on the arm. ‘Anyway, us farmers are going to win this war, didn’t you know?’