A Wartime Secret by Helen Yendall

Author:Helen Yendall [Yendall, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2021-12-07T12:00:00+00:00

Chapter 25

At breakfast time the next day – Saturday – Ray tapped a knife handle on the table. ‘Right, who’s game for blackberrying this afternoon?’

Everyone looked at him in surprise. Maggie supposed this must be part of his ‘morale-boosting’ endeavours. She hoped he hadn’t forgotten about fixing the tandem. Now that she’d agreed to try it out, she was keen to get started. She’d written to Vi again and told her she might be able to come and visit in a little while.

Pam looked put out. ‘Blackberries? But I thought we were going to do Keep Fit?’

Miss Sharp frowned. ‘I suppose it might be an idea to do something together, en masse, as it were. We can do Keep Fit another time. But are you sure there’ll be fruit this late in the season, Mr Maguire? It’s already October, after all.’

Ray sat a little taller in his seat. ‘There are lots. I did a recce before breakfast.’

They looked at him blankly.

‘A reconnaissance,’ he said. When they still didn’t catch on, he sighed. ‘I’ve checked! There are plenty of brambles, full of fruit, on the other side of the Mirror Pool.’

The other chaps were exchanging conspiratorial glances around the table.

‘If it’s all the same to you, we’ll duck out, Raymondo,’ Bill said.

‘But we’re game, aren’t we, girls?’ Elsie said. ‘It might be fun!’

They had a morning’s work to get through, but after lunch Ray led the women across the garden. He was twirling a folded black umbrella, throwing it in the air and doing tricks like a drum majorette. Every time he failed to catch it, Elsie and Nancy yelled.

‘Oi, watch it!’ Elsie said. ‘You’ll have someone’s eye out!’

‘Why on earth have you brought a brolly anyway, Ray?’ Pam asked. She and Nancy had linked arms. ‘You’re hardly likely to need it. Unless you’ve been doing a rain dance!’

Maggie looked up. Pam had a point. It was a bright sunny day and the sky was Air Force blue, with hardly a cloud.

‘You’ll see,’ Ray said.

On the way through the grounds, they passed Charity pushing a loaded wheelbarrow. Her face was pink and glowing with exertion. Maggie couldn’t help but admire her friend; she still looked impossibly glamorous.

Charity set the barrow down and blew a strand of blonde hair off her face. ‘Hey, where are you going? Following Ray like he’s the Pied Piper of Hamelin?’

Maggie told her. ‘When do you finish work? Why don’t you come too, if it’s not too much of a busman’s holiday?’

Charity’s face lit up. ‘A scramble in the brambles, eh? Yes, please! I’ve got to chuck this manure on the turnips, then I’ll see you over there!’

The brambles stretched for yards along a grassy ridge and as they approached, Maggie spotted dozens of glossy blackberries. She felt her spirits lift. Good old Ray for organising this little excursion. He wasn’t half bad, really.

‘Right, everyone!’ he yelled at that moment. ‘Spread out and take a few feet each.’ He was directing them with his umbrella. ‘Pam, there; Maggie, there.

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