Chapter 14

GLENYS AWOKE TO find bright sunshine pouring in through her bedroom window and sounds of movement drifting up from the farmyard below. For a moment she was puzzled; why did she feel so happy, as though something really nice awaited her? And then she remembered. It was the second of September and the weather remained brilliantly sunny. Rain would have been most unwelcome, for it was the day Nain was going to leave the house for the first time since her accident. Her injuries had proved to be more extensive than they had first thought, and she had been hospitalised for three months and then under what she called ‘house arrest’ for months more, meaning that Glenys’s presence was indispensable, and much appreciated. But by now Nain was doing a good deal of the cooking and some of the housework, and was eagerly looking forward to collecting the eggs and scattering corn for the impatient hens, perhaps tipping the pigswill into the troughs and certainly picking bunches of flowers from her beloved garden. She had promised the doctor that she would be sensible and not ‘overdo herself’, as she put it, and in return the doctor had agreed that her house arrest could end on this particular date, for it was Nain’s seventieth birthday and the family were going to give her a surprise party to celebrate both her anniversary and her return to normality.

The doctor, however, a grey-haired, bustling little man from Swansea, had grown serious, warning Glenys that though national events might not be uppermost in their minds at the moment, when the great day arrived they might find themselves with more to consider than a birthday party.

‘It can’t have escaped your notice, even in the midst of the harvest, that Mr Chamberlain has been trying to negotiate a peace deal with those damnable Huns,’ he had said. ‘He’s going to talk to the nation on Sunday morning, at around eleven. I’m sure everyone hopes for peace, and for the brownshirts or whatever they’re calling themselves this time round to back down and stay out of Poland, but I remember the last lot and I doubt it. And Mrs Weather’s party is supposed to be on Saturday, isn’t it? What will you do? Call off the celebrations?’

Glenys had shaken her head. ‘We’ll celebrate Nain’s birthday on the second of September whatever that Hitler decides to do,’ she assured him. ‘Weathercock Farm is a long way from Nazi Germany, thank the Lord, but if it is to be war then we’ll face it when it comes and not anticipate trouble before we have to.’ She gave a small shudder. ‘We went to the flicks last winter and the sight of those evil men bombing Spain . . . oh, well, best not to think of it.’

The party was going to be held in the harvest field, for Nain had made no secret of the fact that she was growing more and more eager to leave the house, and the doctor, a sensible man, had told Glenys privately that he knew the value of a really nice surprise when a patient had been confined for as long as Mrs Weather.