Shadow on the Land Read Online Free PDF

qualifications as a chemist. He’d been sent to a laboratory recently relocated in the countryside south of Manchester. Catherine had found a job in a village school and a half-derelict farm cottage for them to live in.
    Elizabeth was nearly two years younger than Catherine and probably even brighter. But Lizzie, as almost everyone called her, had no wish to train as nurse or teacher, the only two options her teachers appeared able and willing to approve. She wanted to travel, to see faraway places and meet new people. The recruiting poster for the WRAF could have been designed especially for her, even down to the blue eyes that looked so well with the uniform. She made up her mind to join. She’d applied, was accepted, and then tried to get a job with the Meteorological Service in Bedfordshire. With very good school results, particularly in geography, she might well have got what she wanted had it not been for a sudden prior need in Belfast.
    To Emily’s enormous relief, after a period of concentrated training, she was posted as a plotter to the Senate Chamber at Stormont, an impressive marble clad chamber which had been handed over to the War Ministry for use as an operational centre for the duration.
    Not only was the formerly large and conspicuousStormont building well camouflaged, but as more than one person had put it, there was no need for Hitler to bomb it, for no one would ever notice the difference.
    It was a bitter comment on an unpopular and inactive government, but it cheered Emily to know that her daughter’s work kept her well away from any of the obvious enemy targets and that the girls’ billets were right out on the edge of the city. There was also the wonderful bonus that occasionally, without any warning, Lizzie herself would appear at the back door, yawning from lack of sleep, grinning from ear to ear and saying, ‘Hello, Ma, I’m home. Thirty-six hours. Can you stand it?’
    Which left Jane.
    Emily had never understood why Alex had wanted to call their third daughter, Jane. With both the other babies he’d discussed names with her and they had no difficulty coming to a decision together. Catherine was named for Emily’s own, long-dead mother, Elizabeth for the aunt who had given her a home when her mother died. Any boy they ever had was going to be called John. But Emily could see neither rhyme nor reason behind Alex’s wanting to call their third girl, Jane.
    ‘They’ll call her Plain Jane at school, Alex,’ she had argued, when it was time to make the final decision.
    ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Jane it has to be. Besidesthat child will never be plain in any way.’
    She had to admit he’d most likely be proved right, for little Jane had been a particularly lovely baby, full of smiles and blessed with great blue eyes that captivated everyone who saw her. Apart from being the prettiest of his daughters, Jane was the sweetest in nature. Soft-hearted to a fault, generous of spirit and possessed of a formidable patience, she seemed to sail through life oblivious to its dark side, protected by an unfailing sense of hope and possibility.
    If ever Alex was downcast, overburdened by the job, or the endless labour problems that had dogged the industry between the wars, then it was Jane who was able to cheer him. It had taken Emily a long time to realize that having a son had been Alex’s passionate desire, but it was his youngest daughter who understood him in a way that Johnny never would or could.
    It was no surprise to anyone when Jane announced she wanted to be a nurse. She’d been looking after other children since she was old enough to go to school. She’d learnt to apply sticking plaster effectively long before her elder sisters. Nor was it simply cut fingers and grazed knees that Jane would wash and dress. Whatever hurt or damaged creature she laid eyes on, found in the garden or by the roadside, she couldn’t rest till it had been cared for. Emily remembered well the times when she