The Last Train Home

Chapter Six

After breakfast, Mr Goodwin took me to the upper pen. We followed a mud track that led away from both the house and the chicken coop, twisting uphill and past an array of fields and empty pens. From the top of the hill, before we reached the pen, I could see everything the small village had to offer. There were other fields, some with the small dots of animals graving, others appeared to have crop lines dug into the soil.

I could just make out the village square and the spire of the church in the centre of it all, even the railway track that we had arrived on, although it was quiet now. It all looked so big, so green and empty. London had this weird grey haze over it, but that haze didn't exist here and everything was green, and bright, and colourful. Mum always planned on taking a holiday to the country, a little break from the city, but it never happened. When the war was over, I thought we might be able to go as a family.

Mr Goodwin led me down the rest of the track until we came to a wooden fence that stretched beyond where I could see. The part of the fence we came to had broken, with one of the beams attached to the post on only one side. None of the other beams, or posts for that matter, looked healthy with the wood looking soft and easily breakable, as well as the sagging in the middle. It looked like a good portion of the fence would have to be redone.

"Right, I've asked Mr Thompson to drop some wood around for us. We'll take down the two beams here and replace them," Mr Goodwin said, gesturing to the broken part of the fence.

"That's it?" I asked. I looked at the rest of the fence in my eyeline.

"What do you mean?"

"Most of the wood looks like it's rotting, I doubt it will hold up for much longer."

"Hm." Mr Goodwin approached one of the posts and knelt beside it, running his fingers along the wood. "I think you might be right. We can take down this half of the fence and redo it. The last thing I want is a sheep getting out and wreaking havoc on the vegetable patch. Good catch, Sybil."

"My dad used to show me which logs were fit for long term use and which would only be good for a little while when we went to the lumber yard."

"Your dad sounds like a good man." Mr Goodwin stood up. "Let's get this fence down. There are pliers and hammers in the tool bag. Take what you need, and let's get started."

Mr Goodwin grabbed a hammer and a pair of pliers from the tool bag and set to work on removing the wooden beams from the posts. I took up a pair of pliers and walked a short distance away from Mr Goodwin so we could meet in the middle. With the pliers in hand, I scraped away at one of the nails embedded in the wood until I could grab it with the point. Once it had been grabbed, I twisted and manoeuvred the nail until it popped out of the wood.

I tucked the nail into my pocket so it wouldn't end up hidden in the grass or embedded in some poor sheep's foot before moving onto the beam below to free that one from the post. The pliers took more than bashing it with a hammer might have, but I'm sure that would have just broken the wood rather than pulled the nail out. Further down the fence line, I could see Mr Goodwin moving and spinning the plank of wood to try and pull the second nail out and remove it from the wood. It wasn't working.

Once I had removed the two nails on one side of the wood, I walked around to the other side and followed the same action until the board fell away from the post and hit the ground. I moved onto the second one and watched the board drop to the floor and hit the first one, all of the nails safely tucked away in the pocket of my slacks. They were far more practical than a skirt could ever be.

I moved onto the next section of the fence and developed more of a rhythm, going as far as to rip the nail out. That became easier if the wood around the nail had softened by the weather but where it hadn't I had to work the nail out by force. My dad used to get me to do it all the time whenever he wanted to redo something or take a project apart; I had become rather skilled in the art of taking things apart. I could also put them back together, but that wasn't as fun.