he had never seen before, and that if by stopping away from home for a short while he was helping the soldiers to fight that monster Hitler, then he was pleased to do his bit. That’s the spirit, Billy!
And that was it. I have to confess, I was more than a little disappointed. Apart from the fact that his name was Billy Strang and that he came from Newcastle, the article gave me little more information to go on than I already had. It wasn’t much more than a propaganda piece, really. Still, I could add to that what Wilf had told me about the boy’s father managing a shoe shop in Newcastle High Street, and it might get me somewhere. Strang also sounded like a reasonably unusual name.
I browsed through a few more stories but found nothing else related to Billy. I wondered if the Echo or the Despatch had done a follow-up when he left, so I checked the newspapers around Christmas and early January 1940, but again I came up empty handed. It appeared that it was only his arrival as the first evacuee in the area that was deemed newsworthy. I had to hope that, little as it was, it would be enough for Louise to work her magic.
While I was there, I also had a quick scan through the microfiches for 1941 and 1942 for anything related to an outbreak of foot-and-mouth or the disappearance of Nat Bunting. Perhaps I scanned too quickly and missed something, but it seemed to me as if neither incident had made it even as far as the local newspaper. I thought again of trying to find the newspaper accounts of Grace’s trial, which would probably be in Leeds reference library, but I decided I didn’t really need them after reading Morley’s account. Besides, it wasn’t so much the trial I was interested in any more, it was Grace herself.
On my way back from Darlington, I decided to pay a call on my neighbours, the Brothertons. Wilf had said they might know something about Kilnsgate during the war, and they were hardly out of my way. I pulled up at the end of their short drive and made my way across the frozen mud of the farmyard to the house. Two collies stood barking at me, their tails wagging. It wasn’t a large farmhouse, but there were quite a few outbuildings, barns, byres and the like, along with a chicken coop. I could hear cows mooing and smell that farmyard smell.
A man of about forty or so opened the door the moment I started to knock. He had clearly heard the dogs announce me. He was wearing a thick crew-neck sweater and jeans and had a mop of dark curly hair and black eyebrows that met in the middle. He looked at me quizzically, and I introduced myself. He smiled, shook hands and invited me in.
I had no sooner got inside than another dog came bounding along and started rearing up at me. It looked like a mongrel of some kind. I stroked it, let it lick my hand, and it calmed down. I could see a few cats gliding around, too, and two small children stared up at me wide eyed from a floor covered in building bricks and various other toys. One of them looked about two; the other was perhaps four. A woman came in, drying her hands on a towel. ‘Excuse the mess,’ she said, ‘only we weren’t expecting company.’
I smiled. ‘I’m sorry to drop by unannounced, but it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I’ve been meaning to say hello for a while. Mrs Brotherton, I assume?’
‘Jill, please. And my husband’s Tony. Come on through to the lounge and sit down. Can I get you a cup of tea or something?’
‘That would great,’ I said. ‘Milk, please, no sugar.’ I followed her through to a tidy living room with its maroon three-piece suite, TV in the corner and a low glass coffee table. The dog followed me, then settled down on the carpet to lick itself. Tony Brotherton sat down and Jill disappeared to make tea.
‘I’m sorry I haven’t called earlier,’ I said. ‘I’m not used to the isolation up here. I can’t even see your house from mine.’
Tony Brotherton laughed. ‘You get used to it. And you must forgive us, too. The rumours that you have to winter out for ten years here before your neighbours will talk to you are not true at all. It’s been a busy time, Christmas and everything. Then there was the weather.’
‘Ah, yes. The weather.’
We talked about that for a while, until Jill returned with the tea in mugs on a tray, along with an assortment of biscuits. She was a strong-looking woman with short auburn hair and a weathered complexion, also wearing jeans and a sweater, and almost as tall as her husband. She looked capable enough of handling anything that came up on a farm.
I wanted to get to the point and return to Kilnsgate to phone Louise and set her on the trail of Billy Strang, but I knew it was important to make polite conversation for a while, and to answer Jill and Tony’s questions about my work and suchlike. I couldn’t really find a natural way to bring the conversation around to the war, so instead I asked about the history of the farm, who it had belonged to over the years.
‘It’s been in the family as far back as we can trace it,’ said Tony. ‘I know it seems old fashioned these days, but it seemed important not to break the continuity. There was a time when I felt like selling up and moving to the city, but Jilly here talked me out of it.’ He glanced towards the children playing in the other room. ‘It’ll be little Gary’s one day, too.’
‘What about his brother?’
‘It’s the elder son who inherits,’ said Tony.
I wanted to comment that this seemed a little unfair, especially if the elder didn’t want to be a farmer and the younger did, but I sensed that would only close doors, not open them.
Jill handed us each a mug of tea and came to sit on the chair arm beside Tony. She took his hand and smiled down at him.
‘There must have been some very hard times,’ I said.
‘I’ll say. It’s not an easy life, farming. Probably the worst was about ten years ago, just after Dad died and we were struggling to keep going. I suppose you remember the foot-and-mouth outbreak of 2001? It brought the whole country to a halt. We lost pretty much everything, just as we were starting out. Every cow and sheep slaughtered. Those were the darkest days, I’d say.’ He looked up at Jill, who nodded and squeezed his hand.
‘I suppose it must have been tough during the war, too, with quotas and rationing and everything?’ I said. ‘Not that you’d remember it, of course.’
Tony laughed. ‘Believe me, I’ve heard all about it. It was one of Grandad’s hobby-horses, wasn’t it, love?’
Jill smiled.
‘We all had it easy, according to him. You hadn’t lived until you’d lived through the war, as if we should all somehow go back in time and do it, just to toughen ourselves up to his standards.’
I laughed. ‘Yes. I was reading up on a bit of history about Kilnsgate,’ I said. ‘The Foxes were living there then, weren’t they?’
‘That’s the woman who got hanged, isn’t it?’ said Jill, instinctively touching her neck.
‘That’s right.’
‘Come to think of it,’ Tony said, narrowing his eyes, ‘I’ve heard somewhere that you’ve become interested in Grace Fox’s story, asking questions all over the place.’
‘ Mea culpa,’ I said. ‘Not much else to do around here.’
‘You can come up here and give us a hand whenever you feel like it,’ Jill said, with a smile to soften the implied criticism. Talk to farmers, and you’d think they’re the only ones who ever do any hard work; the rest of us are soft and lazy. Still, it was a silly thing to say, and I regretted it the minute it was out. I just smiled.
‘I can’t for the life of me remember who told me,’ said Tony.
‘Wilf Pelham, perhaps?’
‘Perhaps. He was a friend of Grandad’s. We bump into each other now and then in town.’
‘Did your grandfather know the Foxes?’
‘I suppose he must have,’ said Tony, ‘but he never said much about them. They weren’t farmers.’
‘What about the trial?’
‘It never really interested him much. He was far too busy on the farm to pay attention to things like that. And I wasn’t even born.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Wilf was telling me how your grandad blamed the military at Kilnsgate for everything, even the foot-and-mouth outbreak.’
Tony laughed. ‘It was one of the many bees in his bonnet, yes. He used to go on about them years after, mostly I think because they blocked off the dale with barbed wire and put out sentries, so he couldn’t go for his usual morning constitutional, or graze his cattle down there. Once you got Grandad started on the war, there was no stopping him. He didn’t like the folks at Kilnsgate, it’s true. Even blamed them for the disappearance of some
