'Of bombs and bees': Sunday Night Read for Aug. 25, 2024

Intrigued by the white turkey peering through the roadside fence, head cocked quizzically, the child urges her father to stop the car.

The turkey, a lace of wattles at its neck, is unfazed by this show of public attention and happy to socialize. At the far side of the field are more turkeys, none white, none wanting to socialize.

It is the summer of 1941, Europe is ablaze with the roar of war, not that the meeting with the turkey has any impact on this tide of events other than to save a five-year-old the trauma of the London Blitz and to create a memory of 70 years.

It is the start of many journeys in the new Ford Prefect to see the white turkey and then to go for afternoon tea. Sarah’s mother, Marion, is very particular about afternoon tea and the drive involves a rigorous search for a venue to meet her very exacting requirements. On one of these journeys behind the fence is a tall lady in a headscarf and long beige coat.

“My daughter likes your white turkey,” says Sarah’s mother.

“Ah, Genevieve,” says the lady in the headscarf and long beige coat, her arm massaging the downy feathers, “would you want some eggs?”

Marion is particularly fond of freshly laid eggs a taste so different to shop bought ones.

“A dozen do yeah,” asked the lady in the headscarf and long beige coat, “if you would wait,” and she disappears up a long, paved pathway.

“Is she special, your white turkey?" Marion asks.

“Very special,” replies the lady in the headscarf and the long beige coat.

“We come here often to see your turkey.”

“Then Genevieve will always have some eggs for you.”

The village of Alfold, an idyllic gem in a small corner of England, hidden but not in hiding, between the English counties of Surrey and Sussex is immune to the grumbles and rumbles of the changing world. It could be said Alfold is a last vestige of everything as it was, everything usual and normal.

Here the cows are milked twice daily, the eggs collected at daybreak, the tractors greased, and the harvests reaped as has been done down the centuries many summers before.

Today is the day to make a very special journey to see the white turkey and today is to know the other side of the fence. The tall lady in the headscarf and long beige coat is there.

“I wondered when you’d come,” says Mrs. Carter.

Four long weeks of pleasure before the autumn school term begins, Sarah is stretched out atop a haystack blanketed in the warmth of August’s midday sun. The child hears only the drone of the honeybees fulfilling their primordial purpose to please their queen, legs laden with sticky luscious sweetness, each small being so vital to the perpetuity of humanity.

Contented and secure in this corner of England, the six-year-old is oblivious to the BBC reports of wins and losses at the front. But there are those in the village who know. Indeed, many of Alfold’s sons are afoot elsewhere. A few of those same mothers and daughters are already grieving.

Two Jersey cows, a retired plough horse, dogs of unclear lineage, barn cats, and more than many rats are in the meadow. The child is mesmerized by the depth and the beauty of the sad eyes of the cows both called Daisy. Milking is hard, she has tried many times.

Mrs. Ambridge, Mrs. Carter’s sister, showed her how to milk the Daisies but it seems she does not have the knack, you have to squeeze and pull, and she must have pulled and squeezed. Sometimes she rides the old plough horse, its back so broad, the first time she levered herself up she found herself upside down under the belly. Mrs. Ambridge chided her husband, “you didn’t tighten the girth, did yeah?” Sarah knows the girth holding the saddle slackens and requires to be re-tightened lest the rider does a 180° turn.

Each Saturday, Sarah speeds downhill to the village corner shop on her freewheeler bicycle, no breaks, no gears, the only way to stop to fall into the ditch as gently as she can. She is there to buy her comics and sweets with pocket money made selling rabbits at the roadside. She takes the dog and a spade to the copse to seek out a rabbit warren. With the dog at one end herself at the other, a rabbit will emerge. Dead rabbit pellets slung from her belt, she returns to the farmhouse kitchen to skin and wash the rabbits. The Horsham road is a busy road. Beneath her Rabbits-For-Sale sign, customers will stop because rabbit meat is good meat in times of rationing.

Sarah awakes from her nap atop the haystack to a cloudless azure sky. She feels within herself the wonder of timelessness that is hers alone; there is no need to do anything only to feel the satisfaction in the lazing and the nothingness of tranquility.

Woken, she feels an instinctive need for sustenance.

She stills to listen to the buzz of the bees so busy, intent, ardent, passionate, returned to replenish the hive, so vital to the continuation of nature’s purpose. Her mouth waters at the thought of the sweet oozing honeycombs. She is no stranger to hives. She knows the bees see her as a friend and are happy to give her their produce. Mrs. Carter had shown her how to wear the big hat and veil, and how to cover up every part of herself so no bee could find her. She learned to brave the hive without the hat and veil. She feels a sense of oneness a kinship with the honeybees. Aroused from her utopia atop the haystack, she slides down to the ground. She gently opens the lid of a hive. Within are rows of honeycombs frames crawling with worker bees and the pervading sweet aroma of honey. Gently, she extracts a frame and, as she does the bees drop away as if to say, “take your pick.” She replaces the lid as quietly as she can, says her thank you’s, and leaves the colony to continue its day.

Honey and cider are her usual midday meal on the long balmy days of summer. She had been told that she is not allowed to drink from the barn cider vats. Ken is there. Ken is the youngest member of the Ambridge tribe. Ken, six feet tall, his long legs sticking out from under his school desk, two years older, drinks from the vat. She dips her cup into the vat and fills it with cider. Then, together with her honeycomb, she climbs aloft the haystack to drink in the midday sun. Is this how heaven is, she thinks?

In the heart of the English countryside spoken German is heard in the fields of harvest. Prisoners of war are actively helping Alfold in the work of cultivating and sustaining its farms. The six-year-old and Helmut, a son of Germany, are often together greasing the tractor. She was pinching a beeswax comb when she first saw Helmut with his simple brown paper bag. He was looking at her honeycomb.

“Schöner tag,” he says and then in an attempt at communication, he gives a mumbling splutter, “lovely day.”

“Sure is”, she says.

“What’s your sandwich?” She points to his brown paper bag. He opens it to show her a ham sandwich.

“Are you thirsty?” she asks. It strikes her to be with an adult in the barn would give her legitimacy.

He does not respond. He does not understand, she thinks.

“Follow me,” she indicates with her forefinger. Together they go into the forbidden barn. The content of the vat is low.

“Have,” she says, pointing to the cup tied by the chain. His arm is longer than hers and he is able to reach to the lower recesses of the vat. She is glad of him. She would have had to make a big bend and the pictured of herself falling into the vat brings a smile to her face. She joins him on the grass outside the barn and they drink and eat.

Helmut and the child are often around the farm, their bond based on lunch times together. His halting English is difficult, but they talk a little. Through a method of signing with his waving outstretched arms, she gleans that he had been a flyer and, through the explosive noises he makes, that he had been a gunner. But it took time to learn from his jumping up and off walls, that he had been a parachutist. He mimed his arms being tied behind his back and she came to understand that he had been captured as a POW. Now he is working in the fields to replace the village men who “want nothing better than to blow him out of the skies”. It is a comfortable friendship. The child is naive to the causes or the course of the war with Germany. He asks her name: “Sarah Cohen,” she says, “that’s what it was, but here they call me Sarah Collins.”

There was silence.

The summer gave to fall, the hay bales sold or sized for winter. Helmut does not come for lunch. Once, when she rode the freewheeler down to the village, she saw him the other side of the road. She waved at him but not a flicker of recognition returned.

Sarah felt his coldness. She had no idea why he did not come to the farm. Maybe he is not allowed to talk to children. She gives no further thought to it. She does not know, and it does not matter. Her world of Alfold, her caring, caretaker family, are nothing but the best, and the three years she spends in their loving arms is to remain with her as the happiest time of her life.

- Judith Bogod, New Westminster

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