Emmerdale at War

Book 0: Emmerdale

by Pamela Bell

Genres: Family Life; Sagas

Synopsis

Emmerdale at War is a must for fans of ITV's Emmerdale, and listeners who love heartwarming and heartbreaking stories set during wartime.

Britain is at war once again and the families of Emmerdale are trying their best to cope with a new way of life.

Rationing has been introduced across the country, two million more men have been called up for service, and blackouts, evacuees and military training camps have become the norm. In Beckindale, three young women are about to find their lives changed forever....

Annie Pearson is working on Emmerdale Farm, while her love, Edward Sugden is at the front line. Lily Dingle has found purpose in joining the ATS, though she may get more than she bargained for. And Meg Warcup, now teaching at the local school, has taken in two children evacuated from Hull. They have adjusted to their new way of life until one day a German plane comes crashing down in the village....and changes everything in the village of Beckindale.

The third novel in the Emmerdale series transports us to the Yorkshire Dales in the midst of World War II, exploring the lives of Emmerdale's much-loved families. Will the nation's favourite village overcome adversity to deal with the loves and lives lost?

Release date: October 3, 2019

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 288

Sample

‘You pick first.’ The tips of two straws poked out of the top of Jacob Sugden’s clenched fist as he thrust it towards his brother.

Annie Pearson twisted her fingers in her apron as Edward grinned and rubbed his chin, pretending to debate which straw to draw. Pretending that it was a joke. As if it came down to anything more than luck anyway. Draw the long straw, and he would stay at Emmerdale Farm, with her. The short one, and he would go and fight.

Please pick the long straw, Edward, she pleaded silently. Pick the right one. Please, please, please get it right.

Beside Annie, Maggie Sugden stood rigidly, her face set in grim lines as she watched her younger son larking around. ‘Get on with it, Edward,’ she said, the snap in her voice revealing the tension she shared with Annie.

They had been equally appalled when Jacob and Edward had announced over dinner that they had been talking about the war and had decided that one of them should enlist now that conscription was being extended.

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Maggie had said with a frown. ‘What do you want to do a daft thing like enlist for? Farming’s a reserved profession, and a lot more use than fighting. You should both stay here and make yourselves useful doing something you know about.’

‘It doesn’t feel right for both of us to stay,’ said Edward while Annie, afraid that she would do something stupid like burst into tears, got up to clear away the plates. ‘I know it doesn’t feel like much is happening at the moment, but we’re at war. They need fighting men, or they wouldn’t have brought in more conscription. We agreed that one of us should go and do his duty for both of us.’

‘Duty!’ Maggie spat out the word. ‘If you’d lived through the last war you wouldn’t talk to me about duty,’ she said. ‘Your dad did his duty, and look what thanks he got for it!’

Annie hadn’t been able to help glancing at Joe Sugden as she bent to pick up his plate. One side of his face was so hideously scarred that the evacuee children who’d been billeted at Emmerdale Farm the previous September had screamed in terror at the sight of him.

She herself scarcely noticed. She had only ever known Joe after the terrible injury that had blown away half his head. He had come home from war a changed man, slow of speech and mind, they said, although Annie didn’t think Joe was as stupid as other people thought. Her pa, Sam, remembered the bitter, brutal man who had gone away to fight. ‘Who says nowt good comes out of war?’ he often said. ‘It changed Joe Sugden for the better, didn’t it?’

What if Edward changed? What if he came home horribly scarred or embittered? Annie’s hands were unsteady as she put the plates in the sink to rinse. She didn’t want anything about Edward to change. She had loved him her whole life.

Edward had looked at his father, too. ‘No disrespect to you, Pa. We know you suffered, but you did your duty and we have to do ours. We’ve talked about it and we both feel the same, don’t we, Jacob?’

Jacob nodded, as usual letting Edward do the talking. The two brothers were nothing alike. One dark, one fair; one sunny-natured, one prone to moodiness. Jacob was good-looking, better-looking than Edward if the truth be told. He was loyal and steadfast, but because he was taciturn those who didn’t know him as well as Annie did tended to assume that he was just a typically dour Yorkshire farmer.

It was hard to believe that he was related to Edward, with his wheat-coloured hair and clear blue-grey eyes. Edward wasn’t as handsome as his brother – Annie could admit that – but his expression was bright and good-humoured, and he had a warmth and a steadiness and an openness to him that meant everybody liked him.

Except for the Skilbecks, of course; but then, they didn’t like anybody and nobody liked them, so that was only fair.

‘We did think we should both enlist,’ Edward had gone on, ‘but that didn’t seem fair to you, Ma. I know you’re more than capable of running the farm by yourself. It’s not as if you haven’t done it before, and there’s Pa and Sam – and Annie, of course,’ he’d added, including her in his smile.

Annie’s heart normally warmed at being considered part of Emmerdale Farm. She had been working there since she was fourteen, helping Maggie in the house and the dairy, and willingly turning a hand to milking the cows or gathering in the harvest if necessary. It was Maggie Sugden who had saved the Pearsons after an accident left Annie’s father badly injured. The Pearsons’ farm had been lost to Clive Skilbeck, but Maggie gave Sam a job at Emmerdale Farm even before he could work properly again, and let them have the old shepherd’s cottage to live in. It was not what they had been used to, and Sam was bitter still about the Skilbecks, but but at least they had a home.

Suspecting that Maggie had taken her on out of the goodness of her heart, Annie worked hard and was grateful. Other girls sometimes wondered that she wasn’t bored, or asked if she wouldn’t rather get a job in a city, but the thought filled Annie with horror. She loved Emmerdale Farm, and not just because it meant she could see Edward every day.

But what would Emmerdale Farm be without Edward? How could he talk so easily about the prospect of going away?

Edward was still trying to reassure his mother. ‘Still, the farm’s bigger now, so Jacob and me, we reckon one of us should stay. Drawing straws seems the only fair way to do it. Come on then, Jacob,’ he said to his brother, ‘let’s do it now.’

So Jacob had found a couple of straws and now there they were, all staring at Edward as he reached out for a straw, almost pulled one, then snatched his hand back, changing his mind at the last minute.

‘Ma’s right, hurry up, Ed.’ Annie could hear the tension in Jacob’s voice. He must want the decision made as much as the rest of them did, she thought.

‘Righto, then. Here goes.’ Edward took a breath and all at once Annie couldn’t bear to look. Biting her lip, she stared out of the kitchen window while her heart thudded anxiously against her ribs.

The sky was an iron grey pressing down on the monochrome landscape. It had been the coldest winter Annie could remember. The snow piled up in great drifts against the stone walls that slanted across the fells, and the lane to Beckindale was impassable in the farm truck. It had been a struggle to get down to the village with the farm’s ration books the day before, and several times she had sunk knee-deep in the snow.

Now it looked as if more snow was on its way. It was warm enough in the farm kitchen, with its fire and the great range that Annie had to clean out and light every morning when she arrived, but it would be a hard trudge back up the track to the old shepherd’s cottage where she had lived with her parents ever since the Pearson farm had been lost to Clive Skilbeck and, oh, when would Edward pick a straw? She couldn’t bear this waiting!

The thought had barely crossed Annie’s mind before she heard Maggie suck in a breath, and knew without looking which straw Edward had pulled.

It was Edward who would be going to fight.

Oddly, it was Jacob she saw first as she turned her head. He was staring as if in disbelief at his hand where a single straw still poked free. The straw Edward didn’t pick. The long straw that meant Jacob would stay safely at home and Edward would go to war.

‘No!’ Annie cried without thinking, and Jacob’s eyes lifted to hers. She saw his expression blaze with a strange mixture of relief and shame before he looked away at his brother.

Annie followed his gaze. Edward was holding the short straw aloft, and he couldn’t hide the excitement in his face. He’s pleased, she thought dully. He wants to go.

‘Don’t look like that,’ he said, glancing from his mother to Annie. ‘I’ll be a hero. I’ll be the one getting all the glory, while poor old Jacob here has to stay at home. No hard feelings, brother?’

A strange look crossed Jacob’s face. ‘None,’ he said after the tiniest of pauses. Taking a breath, he tossed his straw into the fire so that he could shake Edward’s hand. ‘None at all.’

‘I’m going to join the Navy,’ Edward said jubilantly. ‘I’d already decided, if I pulled the short straw.’

‘The Navy?’ Maggie echoed in disbelief. ‘You’ve never even seen the sea!’

‘I have! We had a Sunday School outing, and once me and Annie got the bus to Scarborough. Remember, Annie?’

‘Yes, I remember.’ Edward had loved it but she had found the sea frightening. There was something remorseless about its heaving waves, the way it stretched grey and sullen to a dauntingly wide horizon. She remembered clinging to Edward’s hand as they stood on the beach and shivered in the salty wind. She hadn’t been able to wait to get home to the familiar fells, to the long stone walls and the wooded dales, where the buildings were grey but the grass was lush and green.

‘All those U boats …’ Maggie sank into a chair, smoothing her hair back, distressed. ‘What hope will you have if a torpedo hits while you’re out at sea? Oh Edward, I wish you’d reconsider.’

Edward pulled out the chair next to her. ‘Ma, it’s going to be dangerous wherever I serve. That’s what war’s about.’

‘Don’t tell me what war’s about,’ Maggie said tightly. ‘I know. I lived through four years of it. You think it’s going to be exciting, don’t you? Well, it won’t be, I can tell you that now. It’ll be dreary and hard and it will grind us all down, whether we go to fight or not. Your friends will be injured and they’ll die. You might be injured or die, and we’ll have to sit here and wait for news, not knowing if you’re alive or dead or having your leg amputated or your brains blown out, and all for what?’ She broke off with an exclamation of frustration. ‘Oh, what’s the use of talking to men about war?’

‘I know it’s hard, but I couldn’t live with myself if I stayed at home while others risked their lives to keep us all safe.’ He glanced at Joe. ‘Pa, tell her.’

Joe had been listening intently without saying anything but now he nodded slowly, looking from one son to the other. ‘Proud,’ he said. ‘Both of you.’

Edward’s face relaxed. ‘Thanks, Pa. So no tears now, Ma, nor none from you, Annie,’ he added as she lifted a hand to cover her trembling mouth. ‘You understand, don’t you?’

‘No,’ Annie heard herself say. ‘No, I don’t understand.’ Her eyes blurred with tears. ‘Excuse me, I’ll just … I need to …’ Unable to think of an excuse but knowing she had to get out before she started howling, she grabbed her heavy coat from beside the door and walked out of the kitchen, ignoring Edward’s demand for her to wait.

The cold hit her as soon as she stepped outside, and she gasped for breath as her chest tightened. She looked around blindly. She would freeze to death if she stood out here, but she couldn’t go back to the kitchen, not yet. She headed for the stable instead, wading through the snow to pull open the heavy wooden door and stepping into the familiar fusty smell of straw and manure. The two carthorses, Daisy and Dora, greeted her with a whicker as they stood placidly chewing. Even Neddy the donkey had been brought inside to shelter from the cold with Bessie, the pony who pulled the trap that they were using more, now that petrol was rationed.

Edward found her there, rubbing the donkey between his furry ears. He didn’t say anything immediately, but patted Neddy absently on his rump.

‘He’s getting fat.’

Annie knuckled tears from under her eyes. She didn’t want to make this too hard for Edward, so she tried to steady the wobble in her voice.

‘He’s looking better than he did.’

‘That’s not hard. Remember what a state he was in when we brought him back?’

Annie had been out blackberrying a couple of years earlier when she had come across Oliver Skilbeck tormenting a frail donkey. Edward often teased her about how soft-hearted she was, but Annie couldn’t bear the thought of anyone hurting an animal and when she saw what Oliver was doing, she hadn’t stopped to think. Marching over, she had pushed him away from the donkey and shouted at him to stop being a cruel bully. ‘And don’t think I’m going to leave him here for you to start teasing him again as soon as I’ve gone! I’m taking him with me.’

Oliver had been so surprised at quiet Annie Pearson standing up to him that he had gaped at her as she snatched the rope from his hand. ‘Have him if you want,’ he sneered, recovering himself. ‘He’s just a waste of grass. I was taking him to the knackers anyway.’

‘In that case, I’ll definitely take him.’

‘Hey, don’t I get something in return?’

‘No, you don’t!’ Annie’s face was pink with temper, and Oliver’s eyes sharpened with interest.

‘Give me a kiss, and you can have him for free.’

She had recoiled in horror. ‘I’m not kissing you! I hate you!’

‘That’s not very nice now, is it?’ Oliver dodged round to block Annie’s attempt to lead the donkey away. ‘It’s not like you don’t kiss. Everybody knows you do it with Edward Sugden.’

‘Leave me alone!’ she cried when he grabbed her and she beat at him with her fists, but that only seemed to excite Oliver.

‘I always thought you were a mousy little thing, but there’s a bit of spark to you, isn’t there? Come on, just one kiss!’

‘Take your filthy hands off her!’

Never had Annie been so glad to hear Edward’s voice. He had pulled Oliver off her and the next moment the two lads were grappling on the ground. Edward had come away with a black eye and cut lip, but Oliver had fared even worse. He had never forgiven either of them for his humiliation. Not that Annie cared about that.

She and Edward had led Neddy back to Emmerdale Farm, where he had been enjoying retirement in a field with Bessie and the carthorses ever since. Her parents couldn’t afford to keep animals, but any strays she rescued had to find a home at Emmerdale Farm. A tiny black kitten rescued from a sack thrown into the river was the one animal she had been able to take to the cottage, and that was only on the understanding that Sooty would feed himself on the mice in the outbuildings and other wildlife.

‘It’s all we can do to feed the three of us,’ her father, Sam, had pointed out.

Annie scratched Neddy’s nose. He was such a patient, sweet-tempered animal, she couldn’t understand how anyone could have wanted to hurt him. ‘You fought Oliver Skilbeck for me,’ she reminded Edward.

‘He made you cry.’ Edward paused. ‘And now I’ve made you cry. I’m sorry, Annie.’

‘You wanted to get the short straw, didn’t you?’

He hunched a shoulder. ‘It’s just … I’ve never been anywhere, or done anything. I don’t want to be the one who stays here while the war happens somewhere else. At least this’ll be a chance to see somewhere other than Beckindale.’

‘What about me?’ she asked, without looking at him.

‘Annie, you know I love you, and I know you love me too.’ He ducked his head, trying to meet her eyes and make her smile. ‘We’ve always belonged together. The war won’t change that. I’ll come back to you, I promise, and we’ll get married – if you’ll wait for me.’

Annie looked up at that, her heart in her eyes. ‘Of course I will, Edward. It’s just … I’ll miss you.’

‘It won’t be for ever, and meanwhile, let’s make the most of the time we have together.’

‘All right.’ Sniffing unromantically, Annie offered a watery smile. ‘I’d better get back to the dishes.’

‘Ma said she’ll do them. She gave me a right ticking off for not talking to you before all this, and told me to take you out for the rest of the afternoon. Come on,’ he said grabbing her hand buoyantly and towing her towards the stable door. ‘Got your gloves?’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I found the old sledge in the barn earlier. The snow’s perfect right now. Let’s go tobogganing and have some fun while we can.’

‘Be quiet, children!’

Meg Warcup sighed and glanced yet again at the clock on the classroom wall. The children had been wild all day, poking at each other and chattering and crashing around like animals. She should just let them out, she thought. It was hopeless trying to get them to concentrate when it was snowing outside and the hill behind the Post Office was just begging to be climbed and slid down.

Through the window she could see Edward Sugden and Annie Pearson dragging a toboggan. In earlier years, she and Rosie would have been with them, and Jacob. They had all been part of a gang who had played and fought together for as long as Meg could remember.

And she had been the leader in most of the mischief, incredible as it seemed now. Old Miss Atkinson, the schoolmistress in their day, had sucked in her teeth whenever Meg’s name was mentioned. ‘She’s a little devil,’ an exasperated Miss Atkinson had told Robert Warcup more than once. ‘She leads Rosie and the other children astray. Can’t you and Mrs Warcup do anything to control her?’

How Miss Atkinson would stare if she could see Meg now! Meg caught a glimpse of her reflection in the schoolroom window: sensible shoes, obstinately straight dark hair drawn severely away from her face, a stern expression.

Rosie would hate what she had become.

Meg felt her face twitch at the thought. Perhaps she could put all the children out of their misery and let them go early – but that would be rewarding them for their bad behaviour, wouldn’t it?

Turning from the window, she saw Ruby Dubbs sliding out of her desk. ‘Ruby, please sit down and open your book,’ she said sharply.

‘I’ve finished it,’ said Ruby with one of her sullen looks.

Meg gritted her teeth. Ruby was an unattractive child, sour-tempered and sallow-faced. She and her little brother Stan were evacuees from Hull. They had been sent away from the city in the first wave of evacuations, part of a contingent of exhausted children, pregnant women and those nursing small babies who had ended up in Beckindale the previous autumn.

As schoolmistress, Meg had been the obvious choice as billeting officer for the village. She had spent many evenings cycling around trying to persuade the people of Beckindale to take in the evacuees. It was amazing how many had turned out to have palpitations or heart problems, which meant they couldn’t offer a bed or two, but eventually Meg had found homes for all the evacuees, and at the end of a bewildering session when the hosts had descended on the village hall to pick up their reluctant guests, only two had been left without anywhere to go.

Ruby and Stan.

It was hardly surprising that no one had wanted to give them a home, with scrawny Ruby glowering ferociously as Stan, even smaller and scrawnier, scratched the lice in his hair.

Meg had had the cottage to herself since her father had died. The last thing she wanted was to take on two children, let alone two as dirty and difficult as Ruby and Stan, but she could hardly leave them standing there in the middle of the village hall.

‘You’d better come with me,’ she had said with an inward sigh.

She had moved out of the tiny room she had shared with Rosie and now slept in her parents’ old bed. After a battle royal, she had given both Ruby and Stan a good scrubbing in the tin bath in front of the fire, and combed the lice out of their hair. She fed them as best she could on their limited rations and made sure they were warmly dressed.

Of course it was right. Of course it was sensible. It was war, and everybody had to get on with things. But still Meg hated seeing Ruby sitting in Rosie’s seat, hated knowing that she was sleeping on Rosie’s side of the bed. Although she should be glad that the children were using the bed at all, Meg knew. When they had first arrived, she had found them curled up underneath the bed. It turned out they had never slept in one before. Stan was still wetting the bed at night, which meant Meg was constantly washing sheets when she had lessons to prepare and meals to cook and clothes to mend and a house to keep clean. Was it any wonder she was short-tempered?

To be fair, Ruby wasn’t any happier with the situation. She complained incessantly about being made to live in the country. It was too quiet, it was too dark, it was too smelly. She had never seen cows or pigs or even hens before, and Meg suspected she found the fells frightening. At the first opportunity, ten-year-old Ruby had taken Stan and headed back to Hull, though the village policeman, Jack Proudfoot, had come across them marching along the road to Ilkley and had promptly brought them back to Meg.

Ruby tried again a week later, and that time she and Stan made it all the way home. Meg was relieved to hear that they were safe, but was glad to have the cottage to herself again. The other evacuees were drifting home, too, as the threatened bombings never happened and the war seemed increasingly phoney.

The next day, though, Ruby and Stan were back, brought by their mother, Beryl Dubbs, a wiry, sharp-featured woman who had handed her children over to Meg as if they were parcels. ‘You two bugger off,’ she had said to them, her sharp eyes darting around the cottage. ‘I want a word with Miss Warcup here.’

‘But Mam—’

‘I said bugger off!’ Beryl screeched, rounding on Ruby. Stan flinched, but Ruby pressed her lips together and took his hand to lead him out of the room.

Meg felt obliged to offer Mrs Dubbs a cup of precious tea.

‘Don’t mind if I do.’ She settled herself at the table and looked at Meg hopefully. ‘Got a ciggie?’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t smoke.’

‘Shame.’ Beryl dug in her handbag and produced a cigarette of her own, lighting up and inhaling deeply, only for her thin frame to be shaken by a deep, phlegmy cough. ‘Don’t worry, I’ve given them both a good hiding for coming back the way they did,’ she told Meg when she had recovered. ‘I’ve told them they’re to stay put.’

Meg was aware of an unexpected pang of sympathy for Ruby, who had gone to so much trouble to get back to this woman, who was clearly only too ready to get rid of them again.

‘I think they were homesick,’ she said carefully as she poured the tea.

‘Ruby, she just likes to make trouble,’ said Beryl dismissively. ‘I can’t be doing with them under my feet all day, not with my job in the munitions.’ She blew smoke over the table, waved it carelessly away and coughed again. ‘And now it’s cost me an arm and a leg to bring them back here. So, what I was thinking was, how would you like to keep them?’

‘Keep who?’

‘Ruby and Stan. I reckon they’d be comfortable enough here. Better’n back in Hull.’

‘I’ll try to look after them while they’re evacuated,’ Meg said stiffly.

Beryl squinted at her through the cigarette smoke. ‘I was thinking more like for good.’

‘For good?’ Meg goggled at her. ‘You want me to adopt Ruby and Stan?’

‘We don’t need to do nothing official, like. They just stay here with you when the war’s over. I daresay they’ll be used to it by then, anyway.’

‘What about their father?’

Beryl gave a crack of laugher. ‘Him? He’s not around to care. Buggered off after I had Stan, didn’t he?’

Poor Ruby, Meg found herself thinking. Poor Stan. Unwanted and unloved by those who were supposed to care for them most. At least she knew what it was like to be part of a family, even if she had never been able to comfort her own parents after Rosie’s death.

Now she looked across the table at Beryl Dubbs. ‘There’s no question of me adopting Ruby and Stan,’ she said clearly. ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t want that, and I don’t want it either. I’ll look after them for as long as there’s a need for evacuation, but after that I’ll be sending them home to you.’

‘Oh, well, it was worth a try.’ Beryl stubbed out her cigarette in the saucer and eyed Meg’s scraped-back hair and drab outfit dismissively. ‘Sure you don’t want to think about . . .