God's Acre: A heartbreaking WW2 saga perfect for fans of Sheila Jeffries

By Dee Yates

A heartbreaking WW2 saga, perfect for all fans of Sheila Jeffries and Katie Flynn.
As the drums of war begin to beat louder on the continent, and life becomes more dangerous in cities, seventeen year-old Jeannie McIver leaves the comfort of her aunt's house in Glasgow, to head to the wilds of the Scottish Uplands to start life as a Land Girl.

Jeannie soon falls in love with life on the busy Scottish hill farm, despite all of its hardships and challenges. She feels welcomed by the Cunningham family who value and cherish her far more than her own rather remote and cold parents, and the work is rewarding. She even finds her interest piqued by the brooding, attractive Tam, the son of the neighbouring farmer, and a sweet romance between them slowly blossoms.

But even in the barren hills, they can't avoid the hell of war, and as local men start disappearing off to fight at the Front, Jeannie's idyllic life starts to crumble. Those left behind try desperately to keep the home fires burning, but then Jeannie makes one devastating decision which changes the course of her and Tam's lives forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Apr 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781788545129

Dee Yates

Born and brought up in the south of England, the eldest girl of nine children, Dee moved north to Yorkshire to study medicine. She remained there, working in well woman medicine and general practice and bringing up her three daughters. She retired slightly early at the end of 2003, in order to start writing, and wrote two books in the next three years. In 2007 she moved further north, to the beautiful Southern Uplands of Scotland. Here she fills her time with her three grandsons, helping in the local museum, the church and the school library, walking, gardening and reading. She writes historical fiction, poetry and more recently non-fiction. Occasionally she gets to compare notes with her youngest sister Sarah Flint who writes crime with blood-curdling descriptions which make Dee want to hide behind the settee.

Book preview

1. Liz

May 2002

When her spade encounters the flat expanse of stone, the woman pauses. Carefully she scrapes the dark soil off the surface, examining it for any signs of carving – names, dates, pictures of bones or skulls, such as she has seen in the nearby graveyard. Excited by the possibility that someone deemed unworthy of God’s acre might be lying below the surface of her own back garden.

But there is nothing. The texture of the slab is rough. but there are no signs of human artwork. It must have been part of the footpath that once formed a shortcut to the nearby public house. The villagers have mentioned this… and she can see for herself the network of stones that have been used to block the gap in the wall. They have been laid this way and that and interrupt the normal pattern of its fashioning.

Straightening up, she pushes a hand into the small of her back and stretches. It’s a while since she has done anything this strenuous and her muscles ache. A pair of buzzards call to one another across the valley. She looks up into the cloudless sky, screwing up her eyes against the brightness, emphasising the crows’ feet and the laughter lines that have intensified with age. When she spots the wheeling black specks, she follows their progress as they circle slowly towards the pines and disappear among the foliage.

Her blue-grey eyes refocus on the tall graveyard wall in front of her. It runs the length of her garden. One or two taller headstones tower above it, but others can only be seen from the vantage point of the cottage and the rest from a walk through the cemetery itself. The small tower of a church, deconsecrated long since, is also visible. It is the likely home of the jackdaws sharing the bird seed that she puts out each morning.

It’s a comfort to live so near to this final resting place. Not that she is expecting to join her neighbours in the near future. But it is good to see that the graveyard overlooks such a magnificent view. Her mother, so recently buried, lies in a grimy and huge urban burial ground far from the countryside. How she wishes, however irrationally, that her mother could be at rest in a place such as this and with such a view. Her garden slopes down the valley side. Beyond the wooden post and rail fence, the incline is steeper. Through the wide base of the valley, a river meanders, fed by a small tributary that runs down the hill to one side of her garden. This burn has gouged out a path for itself through a large field used for grazing, and rocks protrude from the eroded sides like a geological timeline.

On the slopes facing north, the hillside is cloaked with a dark forest of pines, within which the buzzards, the occasional deer and a myriad of small birds have their home. The trees stand dark and clear against the blue sky today. But on damp days the mist is a grey shroud that obscures the view. When it lifts, it leaves behind hazy trails, like sheep’s wool caught on a barbed-wire fence.

The square of black earth exposed by her digging is small. But she has made a start. Each day she will add to it, as long as this good spell of May weather holds. And if her back complains, she will vary her activity. Plenty of other jobs await her in the neglected plot. Flower beds, anonymous in the brown sludge of decayed vegetation, untidy grass cloaked in rotting ash leaves, bushes unpruned, whippy stems surrounding a central body like a bad haircut.

She smiles and the skin of her face creases again. Oh, yes! There is plenty to be done. But it is for this reason… among many others… that she has bought the cottage. She loves to get her hands dirty. Her last garden was as big as this and even more neglected when she bought the property, but slowly and painstakingly she had planned its rejuvenation. And although she had needed help with the heavier jobs, the majority of it was her own hard labour. Everything she planted there had grown to gigantic proportions. Little chance of the same happening here on this exposed slope on the side of an upland valley. But it is nevertheless a challenge.

Gathering up spade and fork, she stands a minute, drinking in the view. Her mop of white hair is untidy now, her cheek smeared with the mud she has wiped across it from her glove. She is not good-looking, her teeth irregular and her nose exhibiting a tendency to redness. The skin of her face has begun to sag. Sometimes she stares at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and gently pulls the skin back towards her ears, as she knows they do in plastic surgery. The effect is immediate. She loses fifteen years in an instant. She gives a wry smile. Her face in repose makes her look sad. But when she smiles, her cheeks dimple. Then, like all who smile, she is beautiful.

Liz cleans the garden implements and returns them to the shed. The phone is ringing when she steps into the kitchen. She hurries to the windowsill.

‘Hello, Elizabeth Deighton speaking.’

‘Hi Liz, it’s me. Are you alone?’

She toys with the idea of a sarcastic response, but sarcasm always leaves her feeling mean-spirited. So she merely replies, ‘Of course.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m about to make a cup of tea. Care to join me?’

‘Have you been busy?’ he asks, ignoring her question.

‘Yes. I’m starting to sort out the garden. How about you?’ Knowing what the answer will be.

‘Awful! Loads of work piling in at the moment. Can’t seem to get on top of it. And the study’s a tip. I need to get that sorted out before I start.’

She smiles. How many times has she heard that before? Remembering the days when she used to visit and he would heave piles of books and papers onto the floor to make room for her to sit.

‘Oh, sorry.’ The tone becomes businesslike. ‘The meal’s ready. I’ll speak to you later.’

The line goes dead. She stands a moment, the handset clamped to her ear.

‘Goodbye,’ she replies coolly into the silence and clatters down the phone.

She stares out of the window in a bad humour, surprised that the sun is still shining as brightly as it was. Taking off the old jacket that she uses for gardening, her feet search for the slip-ons that she discarded under the table at breakfast time. Not that she stayed still for more than a couple of minutes. Breakfast has become a time of snatched mouthfuls while she dries her hair or feeds the cat or rakes the ashes from the grate. She can’t sit down. The sound of the news programme grimly detailing its latest catalogue of misery is too impersonal a companion. At other meals, the computer or the television gives her a face or at least a screen. At breakfast she cannot afford to idle, for fear her thoughts will uncover the heart-heaviness that lurks always just below the surface.

She fills the kettle and switches it on. While she waits for it to boil, she takes down a circular biscuit tin from the shelf and cuts a generous slice from the fruit loaf contained within. She pours boiling water onto a teabag and milk into a small jug and carries her snack through to the conservatory. Placing the tray on the floor, she drags two heavy books from the shelf and kneels on the mat, running her finger down the index of one. Planning your Garden. It sounded like a good place to start.

Munching on the fruit cake, Liz reads about Climate and Location and then the section on Avoiding Problems. Lastly, her eyes scan the suggestions for Exposed Sites, Sloping Sites and Acid Soils. It is obvious that she will never be able to recreate the nooks and crannies of colour and rampant greenery to be found in her last plot. But the extensive list of drawbacks fails to dent her enthusiasm. It may take twice as long as usual to grow anything remarkable in the sloping, windswept area that is her garden, though the previous resident of the cottage obviously had, at some stage, green fingers. But she has plenty of time to make her own mark. She has no intention of going anywhere, not now, perhaps not ever. That is, until such time as she joins her silent neighbours in their final resting place.

She glances at the wall and the top of the headstones beyond it, one of them topped with a cloth-draped urn, and grins. Her garden soil might be more fertile than anyone imagines. After all, the graveyard has stood for at least three hundred and fifty years. Ample time for a collection of those considered outwith the mercy of God – or at least outwith the mercy of the established church – to be buried deep beneath the surface of her garden. Just as long as she doesn’t come across any of them. She would much rather their contribution to her garden remained anonymous.

2. Tam

September 2001

Tam opened the door of the cottage and sniffed the air. He took a cautious step outside, feeling the frozen ruts of the mud uneven beneath his feet. He scowled. Why hadn’t he dug potatoes from the ground yesterday, before this hard frost set in, making the salvaging of this late crop a difficult, if not impossible, task? He hesitated, but then, with a sigh of resignation, plodded to the small outhouse tacked onto the end of his cottage. If he didn’t make the effort, there would be no dinner. Lifting his fork from the two nails that held it clear of the mud floor, he swung the metal bucket off the ground and made his way with slow steps to the vegetable plot.

The familiar smell of brassicas greeted him on his arrival at the bottom of the garden. Sinking his hand deep into his trouser pocket, he retrieved an ancient, bone-handled penknife and sliced through the stem of a hearty cabbage. He wiped the knife on his trousers and paused, looking at it, his hand on the blade, before folding it into its sheath and dropping it back into the fluffy, soiled depths of his pocket. He stood a long moment, gazing unblinking down the valley side, where, below him, the burn from the village fed into the river. When his eyes began to water with the cold, he wiped the sleeve of his jacket across them, picked up the fork from its resting place against the trunk of the cherry tree and jabbed it into the ground, levering up the soil in unyielding lumps to reveal the firm creamy potatoes beneath.

When the bucket was half full, he stopped abruptly. With a swift intake of breath, he clutched his hand to his chest, his face creased with pain. He remained motionless, knowing from experience that this was the quickest way to disperse the discomfort. He should have known better than to have left the relative comfort of his house on a day such as this. After a few minutes, the tightness ebbed away like a tide on the turn. He stood a minute longer, unwilling to risk too soon a movement, his eyes turning again to a perusal of the field and the tinkling burn below his garden. At last, he bent, picked up the remaining two or three potatoes and threw them into the bucket, where they came to rest with a clang and a thud.

His walk up the slope of the grass was slower than the outward journey and by the time he reached the shed he was panting for breath. Always methodical, he hung the fork back on the nails and shut the door, picking up the bucket again and carrying it to the cottage. Neighbours would have suggested he leave the potatoes in the shed until needed. But why give the mice the opportunity of feasting on his dinner before it had even reached his plate? He stepped into the entry, wiped his feet on the rough mat and shut the door firmly against the cold.

Beneath a shelf that ran the length of the kitchen hung several pans, ancient and blackened with use. Tam unhooked one and steadied the heaviness of it with his hands. They had been his mother’s, these pans, and, for all he knew, her mother’s before that. He filled it with cold water, placed it on the wooden draining board and began to peel the potatoes. It was quiet in the cottage. The only sounds were the occasional grunt from the old man and a soft plop as another potato was added to the water.

At last he was done. He picked up the peeled potatoes and turned to lift them onto the stove when a second spasm of tightness gripped him. Letting go of the saucepan so it hit the ring with a jolt that sent water cascading over its rim and down the front of the oven, he sat down abruptly on the kitchen chair behind him. A cat put its head round the door and, strolling over, wound itself round his legs. At first, overwhelmed by the paroxysm, he took no notice of it, but as the pain once more ebbed away, he bent down and fondled the creature’s neck.

‘Come to look after your old friend in his hour of need, have you, Tabitha? Aye, at times like these, it’s good to have a woman about the house, so it is.’

The cat gave an answering purr, rubbed herself against Tam’s boots one more time and walked sedately to her bowl.

‘Oh, so it’s milk you’re wanting, is it? I didnae think it was only to show me love and affection that you were here.’

He reached for an enamel jug that stood on the table, sniffed it out of habit and, with a shaking hand, began to pour a small amount into the cat’s bowl. The milk slopped over the edge onto the lino and the cat obligingly began to lick up the spill, before starting on what was in her dish.

Tam withdrew a grimy handkerchief from his pocket, mopped his brow and then blew his nose loudly before putting the hanky away. He looked at the pan that he had filled.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, addressing the potatoes. ‘I’m no’ feeling like anything to eat just now. Later, perhaps.’ He shook his head sadly and smiled. ‘Must be going stupid – it’s bad enough talking to the cat!’

With an effort, he levered himself from the chair and set off towards the living room. Pausing, he reconsidered, turned and pushed open the bedroom door that was standing ajar.

‘I’ll just have a wee minute or two on my bed and then I’ll get on with cooking my dinner,’ he said to no one in particular.

Lying back, he closed his eyes, too weary even to unlace and remove his boots.

Tabitha finished her bowl of milk before following with dainty steps the direction her master had taken. Unperturbed by finding him in the spot she had so recently vacated, she jumped onto his stomach, circled twice slowly and deliberately, sat down and began to clean her whiskers.

The old man didn’t move.

3. For Sale

January 2002

Liz can’t believe her luck when she sees the ‘For Sale’ sign attached drunkenly to the front gate. It is unclear from the dilapidated state of the cottage whether its most recent resident is living in a similar state of neglect or has given up the unequal battle and departed to pastures new, either in this world or the next. What is clear is that the cottage, whatever its current decrepit appearance, has the best view in the village. And although Liz has often heard quoted the maxim ‘Never buy a house for the view’, she feels certain that, in this case, there will be a queue of would-be purchasers.

The estate agent seems taken aback by the speed of her response. He agrees to show her round and they arrange a time and a day.

When, two days later, she steps into the cottage she sees that the description of it being ‘in need of some modernisation’ is no exaggeration. But she is not put off by the paucity of rooms – two in fact, with what is little more than a corridor squeezed between, quaintly described in the brochure as a galley kitchen. The meagre space of the cooking area is further depleted by a rusty metal ladder that leads up into the attic. Liz peers up the ladder and is met by darkness and a cold draught of musty air.

A row of blackened pans hang from hooks beneath a shelf running the length of the kitchen. On it are ranged baking trays, rusting metal biscuit tins, jars and containers of various sizes, a glass demijohn, furry with grey dust, and a set of weighing scales, their copper surface tarnished and dull. It seems to Liz as though she has stepped back several decades into the kind of house beloved of museum curators. A stone sink stands in the corner beneath a small window and, next to it, an electric cooker. On the floor, linoleum, cracked and lifting round the edges, reveals glimpses of the stone floor beneath. All that is needed, she thinks, is the model of a cook, in black dress, frilly apron and starched hat, standing uncomfortably angled at the stove, wooden spoon poised over a never-boiling double pan of hollandaise sauce. Although, she realises, even as she imagines it, that a maid of that generation would not have had the advantage of electricity. This amenity has been listed with others as contributing to part of the cottage’s ‘modernisation’. Looking up at the metal lampshade suspended from a frayed twist of wire, Liz considers the word overstated.

‘I hope the owner doesn’t mind us looking round when she’s out,’ she says, seeing the further signs of habitation in the stained tea towel on a hook beneath the window and a greasy oven glove hanging by its side. She turns to Kenneth Mackie, the young man from the estate agent’s, who has ventured no further than the front door. He sniffs.

‘She was a he, actually. I believe the old chap died, so I’m sure he won’t mind you looking round.’

‘Oh, I’d no idea.’ She scans the room, seeing it with new eyes. ‘Did he live here long?’

‘I believe so.’

‘It doesn’t look as though he had many visitors. That’s sad.’

Her companion glances at his watch. ‘Perhaps you would like to see the rest of the cottage.’ His voice is bland, disinterested. It is clear that he has no opinion on the previous resident, dead or otherwise, or the property in his charge.

‘Yes… yes please.’ Liz follows him into the bedroom. It’s sparsely furnished, but the heavy, old-fashioned pieces fill the space. The bed is situated within a recess, where it can be closed off with a curtain. The curtain has been pulled back and hooked behind a chair and the bedcovers are crumpled, as though someone has been lying on top of them. This intimacy comes as a shock to Liz. She glances towards the door, eager to leave the room and look elsewhere.

The living room is a little more welcoming. In it she can picture the old man going about his tasks. He must have been very old, she thinks, given the antiquity of the furniture. His favourite chair is drawn up to the fireplace. Ashes lie cold in the grate and litter the hearth. On a rag rug down-at-heel slippers wait for their departed owner. A naked light bulb hangs from the centre of the ceiling. Against the wall opposite the fireplace stands a bookcase, stuffed with volumes in identical orange-brown covers and with indecipherable titles. A small sash window adorned with cobwebs rations the light entering the room. She walks over to it, examining the deep recess with its eighteen-inch-thick walls. Hopefully these will keep out the chill of winter.

On the windowsill is propped a solitary photograph. It is sepia and blotted with age. Liz steps up to it slowly and stares at the smiling girl with a frizz of hair encircling her face. She is standing in a field and holds a bucket in one hand, a rake in the other. Around her and in the distance are sheep. But the girl has eyes only for the view in front of her. She is looking not at the photographer but to one side. The young face is radiant. But it is not this that causes her heart to leap. It is the familiarity of the image in front of her.

It is a photo of Liz’s own mother.

When she can trust herself to speak, she turns to the estate agent, steadying herself with a hand on the back of a chair. ‘What… was the old man’s name… the man who lived here?’

Kenneth Mackie shrugs. ‘No idea, madam.’

‘But surely, if you’re selling his cottage….’

Kenneth opens his folder and glances at the sheaf of papers it contains.

‘The vendor’s name is a Mr N. Cunningham. He’s at an address outside the village. The property was no doubt rented.’

Liz frowns. The name means nothing to her. ‘Can you give me his address, this Mr Cunningham?’

‘I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to do that, madam. All negotiations take place through the estate agent.’ He shuts the file with a snap.

‘I wasn’t wanting to negotiate with him.’ She glances at the photo and back to the young man. ‘I only wanted… What will happen to all these things?’ Liz gestures around her. ‘Has the man no relatives?’

‘Apparently not. Presumably the solicitor of the deceased will make arrangements for disposal of the contents.’

‘You mean throw them away?’ Liz is horrified by the thought.

‘Well, if you ask me, there’s nothing worth saving here. It’s just a load of junk. If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you around outside.’ The man turns and walks into the entrance. She hears the hinges squeak as he opens the front door.

Liz scowls at his unprofessional summing up. She waits a second, throws a glance into the empty corridor and steps back to the window. Picking up the sepia picture, she blows the dust off it quickly and slips it into her handbag. Her heart is beating fast. She takes one last slow look at the room and steps briskly over the threshold to join the callous and unhelpful estate agent in the garden.

But Liz has already seen all that she needs to see. Even before coming face to face with the coincidence of her mother’s photo, she has decided that she wants to live in this cottage. It has given her a feeling of having arrived, of having stumbled upon something for which she has been searching for a long time. The photo has, heart and soul, cemented her resolution. This, it is telling her, is where she belongs.

Even the outside toilet and the lack of a bathroom don’t deter her. They are merely two of the many things that will need bringing up to date. Neither is she put off by the garden, now untended and overgrown, although clearly it has had care and attention for many years until recently. The sight of it raises her spirits. She will restore it to its former glory, and she will try and persuade whoever has responsibility for the old man’s possessions to allow her to keep his shed full of garden equipment. It will give her something with which to begin her task.

She picks up a spade which is resting against the wall of the garden shed and lovingly runs her hands over its handle, smooth with work. The garden will hopefully recognise the implements that have lovingly tended it for so many years.

*

The name Cunningham in the local telephone directory fills half a page. She runs her finger down the list, checking addresses. ‘Outside the village’ the estate agent had said. Did he mean just outside or in a different area altogether? There is no way of telling. All she can do is ring each of the numbers in turn until she finds the person she is searching for.

Her phone calls draw a blank. Her enquiries are met either with an apology that he or she is not the person she is looking for or with a recorded message to ring back later. In several cases the phone rings and rings and no answering voice comes to her aid. She makes a note of those numbers and sits back, frustrated that she is no further forward.

Having little else to do, Liz decides to pay another visit to the village, to recapture the excitement that has now been dimmed by the impersonal surroundings of the hotel in which she has chosen to stay.

A raw wind is gusting through the valley as she walks slowly downhill past the cottage. She gazes at its forlorn appearance, hunkered down against the weather, and the windows stare back blindly, their glass, filmed with dust, having the appearance of elderly cataracts. By the time she has reached the river, her fingers are numb and the air is full of starved snowflakes. It is no day for enjoying the environs of the village and, turning, she makes her way briskly up the hill. By the time she reaches the pub, her cheeks are glowing and blood is beginning to flow back into her deadened extremities, giving her hot aches.

‘Not a day to be out and about if you can help it,’ the landlord says unnecessarily, as she climbs onto a bar stool. A fire burns in the grate and the small room exudes cosiness.

She smiles at him through the pain of her fingers and looks round the empty room. ‘It looks as if all your customers have decided to stay at home.’

‘Och! It’s always quiet the noo.’ He glances at the clock on the wall. ‘See, there’ll be one or two in shortly on their way back from market. Or they’ll call in to get warm after a morning on the hill checking sheep. Now, what can I get you, hen?’

‘I’ll have half a lager and lime, please.’

‘Coming up.’ The landlord takes down a glass from the shelf above the bar. ‘You’re not from round these parts, are you?’

‘No, but I’m hoping that I will be shortly. I’m planning to buy in the village.’

‘You mean the cottage down the hill?’ He looks at her as though her brain has become slightly unhinged. ‘You’ll have your work cut out with that one.’

‘It does need a bit doing with it, I’ll grant you that.’

A draught of cold air heralds the entrance of someone else seeking warmth or sustenance, or both. Liz turns. The man is late middle-age, with a face scoured and stained by a life lived outdoors. He wears a waterproof jacket and trousers and smells unmistakably of sheep.

‘A good morning at market, Alastair?’ the landlord asks, reaching down a pint glass and tilting it to accept the steady black stream of Guinness.

‘No’ so bad.’ The newcomer rubs gnarled hands together to warm them. ‘Better inside than out on a day like today.’ He turns to Liz and nods. She smiles back and takes a sip of her lager.

‘This young lady’s thinking of moving into the village… buying the cottage down the hill.’

‘Neil’s decided to sell then, has he? Can’t say that I’m surprised. Tam’s been gone a few months. After all, it was built as a farm labourer’s cottage and there aren’t the farmhands needed now… and not likely to be. There’ll be more and more of these labourers’ cottages up for sale. Just so long as the people buying them aren’t going to leave them empty as holiday homes while they go and stay in the big city.’

‘Nothing like that', says Liz. 'That way leads to the death of a community. No, I’m determined I’m going to live in mine and make my home here. Er, Tam, you said, used to live there. Did you know him? What was he like?’

Alastair turns his mouth down at the corners. ‘Old Tam? I didn’t know him well… nobody did. Bit of a loner, he was… a proper old bachelor. Looked after himself all the time that I knew him. His father used to farm where I am now. I came from a neighbouring village and took over the tenancy not long after the old man died. Well, I say old, but to be honest he wasnae that old. Tam, now, he became a bit of an odd-job man – some farm labouring, some tending gardens round the village. Oh, and he used to help the gamekeeper out at busy times of the year.’

‘Did Tam have no family at all, then?’

The farmer is quiet for a minute, thinking. ‘I heard there was an older brother – Alan, I believe they called him.’ He takes a sip of his Guinness and runs his tongue across his upper lip to remove the moustache of froth.

‘Don’t mind me asking.’ The landlord gives her a bemused look. ‘But do you have family here? After all, it’s a bit out of the way for someone like yourself, is it no’?’

‘I don’t have family here now, as far as I know, but my mother knew the village years ago. She used to talk about it and, more recently again, before she died.’ She pauses and the two men, understanding