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it.
    Father smiled to himself as he prised apart
another knot. ‘It takes a foolish boy to refuse a pork dinner in the midst of a
war.’ He laughed. Then he put down his completed rope and pulled me under his arm.
‘Don’t take it to heart, Vi. He’ll be thinking of the lambs,
that’s all.’
    Father knew exactly how to get me to let go
of my worries – how to place them next to a simple task so that I could examine them
from a distance and think,
There, it’s only a matter of persisting until every
knot is untangled, until every rope is smooth.
But I was not a girl who could
let things rest. No matter how hard I tried to concentrate on the ropes, I returned to
Pete’s words again and again, knotting and unknotting them and not getting any
nearer to the truth.
    No sooner had I left Father in the church
than I began to fret again. I went and found Annie, who was fetching kale from the
bottom of her cottage garden.
    ‘Something isn’t right.’
She frowned when I had told her everything – so much for keeping the pig a secret.
    ‘I’ve ruined it, haven’t
I? Perhaps I was too keen.’ I stood up from the wall where we were both sitting
and paced up and down its length.
    ‘Since when has your keenness stopped
him?’ she quipped.
    ‘Oh, don’t! I can’t bear it!
It’s all right for you.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You’re the one he really likes,
silly.’
    She looked at me vacantly.
    ‘Never mind.’ I sighed.
    ‘Maybe Mr Archam really does need
him.’
    ‘Do you think …?’
    ‘Your father’s right. You know
how it is with the lambing. Mr Archam will want an extra pair of hands at the
ready.’ We stayed silent for a moment, testing Annie’s theory in the quiet
between us.
    ‘No, it’s no use,’ I
began. ‘You know how the Archams are. They’re too afraid to make demands on
him. And he’s not the kind of boy to ever feel obliged, is he?’
    ‘Apparently not,’ said Annie,
with a wry grin. She paused. Her expression softened. ‘Vi … I
don’t quite know how to say it – and I really don’t know whether it answers
anything – but … there’s another dance on at the military camp tomorrow
night. An ATS girl told me about it.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Well, do you think Pete might be
going?’
    ‘We both know he hates dancing,’
I scoffed, with slightly too much fervour. I could feel myself whitening.
    ‘That’s what I thought.’
Annie waved her suggestion away.
    ‘You don’t think he’s
taking someone, do you? I mean … a girl?’
    She met my stare and I held hers. There was
no need for a reply.



CHAPTER 5
    Father enlisted on the day after I found
Mrs Shelton’s pig: it was 1942, the year before we were evacuated. His age and
profession were enough to excuse him. But he felt duty-bound. As I listened to him
discuss the matter with Mama, I found myself returning to our conversation in the bell
tower: I had been so frivolous to worry over a pork dinner and a boy when, unbeknown to
me, Father was contending with the prospect of war.
It’s only a matter of
persisting until every knot is untangled, until every rope is smooth
.
    ‘It’s
their
labour and
their
crops that are feeding us right now,’ he protested to my
mother, as they passed Mr Colton in his field on the way back from the church. He had a
special solemn voice that he put on for this kind of comment, like the ones we heard on
the radio whenever anyone discussed the war. ‘And what am I doing that’s
useful?’
    Freda and I listened in as best we could
from behind.
    ‘But they need you,’ my mother
countered. ‘You’re feeding them different things.’
    ‘What good are my sermons at a time
like this if I’m not out there pulling my weight? I’m a hypocrite,
that’s what I am.’ He stopped in the middle of the path and turned to face
her. At first, I tried out a smirk on Freda – he had talked in this manner on so many
previous occasions and nothing had ever come of it – but she did not