The Farmer's Daughter by Mary Nichols

don’t know, do I? I wish Gordon and I had tied the knot before he joined up.’
    â€˜Would it have made any difference? He’d still be a prisoner.’
    â€˜But I would be married, with a gold band on my finger and maybe a baby to look after. Now I’ll have to wait for all that until he comes home. God knows when that will be.’
    â€˜Oh, you are down, aren’t you? Cheer up and enjoy yourself while you can. It will soon be over.’
    â€˜Do you really think so?’
    â€˜No doubt of it. Jerry’s on the run.’
    Â 
    Karl was not taken to the farm on Sundays, much to Arthur’s disgust. ‘Do they think animals don’t eat or need milking on Sundays?’ he demanded, when Jean arrived back late for breakfast and everyone was ready for church.
    â€˜I, for one, am glad of a day on our own.’ Doris told him. ‘Are you going to stay at home, Jean?’
    â€˜Yes, there isn’t time to change and I can find plenty to do. I’ll see you later.’
    They left and she was alone in the house. She made a fresh pot of tea and some porridge and sat down to eat it with the newspaper propped against a jar containing home-made strawberry jam.
    German armed forces were holding up the advance on the Caen-to-Falaise Road and there was heavy fighting. The Russians were approaching Warsaw and the Polish underground army had risen up to try and take the city before they arrived. Did the German POWs hear the news, she wondered, and if they did, what did they make of it? Were they glad to be out of it? Karl was unfailingly polite and worked hard, but she had no idea how he felt. He had reacted calmly to Bill’s unfriendliness, but how much self control that had taken, she had no idea. As a man she liked him, as an enemy she ought to keep him at arm’s-length.
    She cleared her breakfast away and prepared the vegetables for lunch then sat down to make a list of jobs to be done during the week and decide which she would assign to Karl. It was a pity he had to be so closely watched or she would set him to work on hisown. Once the sheaves of wheat had dried out, they would have to be loaded onto the cart and taken to the corner of the field where they would be carefully built into a stack with ears facing inwards and thatched with straw to await the arrival of the threshing machine. After that there would be ploughing to do and the ditch alongside one of the fields was becoming choked and needed digging out and there were some hedges that needed trimming. She had almost finished when everyone came back from church and all was noise and bustle again.
    â€˜I’ve been making a list of jobs for Sergeant Muller to do,’ she said, as they sat down to eat. ‘Do you want to add to it, Pa?’ She pushed the list over to him.
    â€˜He could mend the window frames in Gran’s cottage and give them a lick of paint,’ he said, after scanning the list.
    Elizabeth, her grandmother, looked up. ‘Oh, yes, that would be good,’ she said. ‘You’ve no idea how draughty that one in the sitting room is. When it’s windy it rattles fit to fall out.’
    â€˜I’m not sure I’m allowed to ask him to do jobs like that,’ Jean said. ‘It’s not strictly farm work, is it? I’ll see if Mr Gould can do it.’
    They had just finished washing-up, when Bill arrived to go for the walk she had promised him. The afternoon was already well advanced and they could not go far before the jobs on their respective farms called them back. He tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and held it there. Laddie ran along beside them, sniffing here and there along the hedgerows. The sky was overcast and not warm for August.
    â€˜The bombers won’t be flying tonight,’ she said. The Allied bombing of German cities was relentless. She often woke at night to hear the RAF bombers going over and wondered how many of them would not come