Wedding Bells for Land Girls by Jenny Holmes

Author:Jenny Holmes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2018-08-22T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The news on El Alamein was better than expected. Though Rommel had been closing in on Alexandria, lack of ammunition had held up the German advance and a stalemate was reported on the wireless.

‘It could be worse.’ Hilda sat with Edith in her office on the Tuesday afternoon following the burglary, going through the ins and outs of what had been taken. A news bulletin had interrupted their conversation and drawn their attention to bigger things. ‘We’ve got more American troops to back us up in Europe now and our RAF boys won’t let up after Essen.’

‘That’s right,’ Edith agreed, wishing nevertheless that they could concentrate on the matter in hand. That way she might be distracted from Bill’s shock decision to hand over the business to Maurice. She hadn’t slept for two nights and still hoped against hope that he would change his mind. She’d even taken him to one side and asked him to consider the effect enlisting would have on Grace and their marriage – an unusual step that had flown in the face of her determination not to interfere in the lives of the newly-weds.

He’d given her short shrift. ‘That’s between me and Grace,’ he’d snapped and Edith had retreated with her tail between her legs. This was the general way of things for women of her and Hilda’s age: they’d had their own partings and sorrows at the start of the Great War but no one took this into account any more. The young ones thought only of banging the drum and being heroes, as if the world would change for the better this time.

The wireless carried other, less encouraging news. There was every likelihood that Sevastopol would soon fall and the Red Army would collapse in the Crimea. Now the opposition party was gunning for Churchill in the House of Commons, even though he’d flown all the way to America for talks with Roosevelt, and Eisenhower had arrived in London to become commander of their forces in Europe.

‘You wait,’ Hilda asserted as the bulletin ended and she turned off the wireless. She thought that Edith seemed even more pinched and on edge than usual, and that was saying something. ‘Mr Churchill will come through all right. He’ll turn things around before you know it then we’ll all be singing his praises again.’

‘Meanwhile, we have matters closer to home.’ Until now Edith hadn’t been directly involved in events surrounding the burglary. She’d let Hilda inform the police and deal with their visit to the hostel. She had, however, informed County Office and requested extra money to cover the shortfall. ‘We’re to receive five pounds to tide us over, which is more than generous under the circumstances.’

Hilda seemed satisfied. ‘That’ll pay the gas bill and the butcher, among other things.’

‘And what are the police proposing to do?’ Edith’s pen was poised, ready to jot down notes.

‘They’ll inquire if anyone in the neighbourhood heard or saw anything unusual. The trouble was, we were out at church when it happened, all except Doreen Wells.

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