Our Yanks Read Online Free Page A

‘Brigadier Mapperton would certainly agree, my dear.’
    â€˜Well, it’s true, isn’t it?’
    â€˜Up to a point. But there must be many Americans who would have liked to join in much sooner. Indeed, some of them did. American pilots fought in the Battle of Britain, you know.’
    â€˜It doesn’t excuse the rest of them.’ She smiled at him. ‘But don’t worry, Father, I’ll help with the teas.’
    He smiled back, thinking how very dear she was to him, and it suddenly crossed his mind – no more than a faint stirring in his consciousness, like a soft little summer breeze passing through leaves on a tree – that he half-hoped that Miss Skinner’s fears might be justified.
    Sam Barnet found his wife in the sitting room, engrossed in her knitting; something for the Forces, to judge by the look of it. He’d had his evening meal earlier, before the PCC meeting, and now he fancied a cup of tea and a piece of cake and a quiet sit-down before he turned in early. He’d be up well before four, in time to stoke the oven furnace and heave an eight-stone sack of flour down the ladder from the store above the bakehouse for mixing up in the trough. There were no fat bakers. It was backbreaking, sweat-of-the-brow work and he did it all himself, now that Roger was away, except for a school-age lad who came to chop the sticks and bring the coal in. He’d noticed lately that he was getting more and more aches and pains – in his back and his hands, and sometimes trouble with his chest and eyes from the flour dust. The cakes were women’s work and he left those to a hired woman, Mrs Trimwell, and Sally to do once he’d finished the bread and the oven was cooler. They couldn’t make the very fancy cakes any more because of the shortages, but they’d plenty of eggs from two hundred chickens to make good, plain ones. Freda was busy counting stitches, muttering away under her breath, so he went and put the kettle on the hob himself. While he waited for it to boil he put the cups and saucers and the milk in its matching jug out on a tray with a clean white cloth underneath. He liked things done nicely in the house and sometimes wished that Freda was a bit more particular in that department. The kitchen was in a real muddle with the dirty dishes from the meal still piled in the sink. He took the Coronation cake tin off the larder shelf and cut two slices of Madeira – a thin one for Freda and a larger one for himself. It was still good and moist, he noted with his baker’s eye. It’d be one of Sally’s, more than likely: she was very good at the cakes. When the kettle had come to the boil he made the tea in the teapot and fitted the wool cosy over it, with a bit of a struggle. Another of Freda’s knitting attempts with the hole for the spout not in quite the right place.
    When he carried the tray back into the sitting room Freda was shaking her head over the knitting lying in a khaki heap on her lap.
    â€˜I’ve gone wrong somewhere, Sam, but I’m blessed if I can make it out. I’ve got too many stitches.’
    He set the tray on the side table. ‘What’s it meant to be?’
    â€˜A pullover. The WVS are sending comfort parcels to every man from the village who’s away serving in the Forces.’ She held up the knitting which dangled lumpily and lopsidedly from the needles. He felt sorry for the soldier who might have to wear it. Freda was no good with her hands. No good at knitting or sewing and hopeless in the bakehouse. She had tried when they were first married, but everything she’d touched had turned to disaster. Cakes never rose or they burned, pastry turned to lead, even simple rock cakes were more rocks than cakes. But she was good with the customers and popular in the village, which was all useful for business. He was proud of the bakery and of being the fourth generation of Barnets to run it. The