Winter Roses, page 8
In the Rectory her mother watched her anxiously, but it was easy to avoid notice at the moment, for Isabel was in the process of moving her personal possessions from Hop House and packing Robert’s for East Grinstead, and continually coming and going. Her sister still had not expanded on her original statement that she had a job in Ashden and, egged on by her mother, Caroline decided to tackle her.
‘What’s all this about your getting a job, Isabel? Why haven’t you told us about it?’
‘I’ve been busy, that’s all.’ Isabel put on her airy look. So she was biding her time to tell them something they might not approve of.
Everyone had their own interpretation of the word busy, and packing up one small house with the help of the entire staff of The Towers did not, in Caroline’s opinion, compare with getting in the harvest. The latter was taking all her own time at the moment, and she was grateful, because while she was arguing with farmers over pay, sorting out hop-pickers’ disputes, and trying to plan for winter ploughing, she could not be aching for Reggie.
‘Come on, Isabel, what is this job?’
Isabel gave in. ‘Promise you won’t tell Father before I’ve actually started, but I’m going to manage the cinema.’
‘What? The Gothic Horror? You can’t mean it. You?’ Caroline burst into laughter, regardless of the offended expression on Isabel’s face.
‘I believe it to be a most worthwhile means of fighting the war,’ Isabel announced loftily.
‘So that you don’t have to go to East Grinstead?’
‘Not at all. I see it as my duty to provide a means of escape for those tortured by war and its problems.’
If there was one thing worse than Isabel in tears, it was Isabel being pretentious. Isabel had rehearsed these laudable opinions, Caroline suspected, in order to try them out on her before breaking the news to Father. True, he had come to accept the existence of the picture palace, since although there was still virulent discussion in the newspapers as to cinema’s disastrous effect on the morals of the young, Father had judged by results. Apart from increased noise on Bankside at night and custom in the Norville Arms, the morals of Ashden did not seem to have deteriorated – or if they had, the change could not be attributed to the cinema. Ruth Horner, who showed patrons to their seats, wielded her torch very efficiently. Nevertheless, that didn’t mean Father was going to approve of his daughter working there.
‘How will you cope? You’re useless at figures and know nothing about business,’ Caroline asked with genuine interest.
‘Thank you for your confidence in me,’ Isabel retorted crossly. ‘I don’t remember ever asking you how you manage to drum up women for your rotas, with your noticeable lack of patience.’ Caroline blushed. ‘Managing isn’t about adding up columns of figures anyway,’ Isabel added. ‘It’s about organising other people to do it.’
Now there she had a point, Caroline conceded. If anyone could persuade others into doing boring jobs for her, Isabel could.
‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Isabel continued defiantly. ‘I’ve already thought about which films I’ll choose. It’s had far too many gangster and Red Indian films up to now; we want something for the older folk to draw them in. I’ll have Father sitting there roaring his head off with laughter before too long.’
‘I’ll believe that when I see it. How on earth did you persuade our William to let you do it?’
‘I told him what I’ve told you.’ Large innocent eyes held Caroline’s. ‘It’s a service to the village, it takes people’s minds off war, and keeps Ashden on the map – and the name of Swinford-Browne.’
‘Now tell me the real reason he agreed.’
Isabel gave a reluctant grin. ‘If you must know, I threatened to tell Edith all about Ruth Horner if he didn’t let me run the cinema.’
‘Isabel! Is that wise?’
‘It’s not really blackmail.’
‘It’s not the ethics that worry me. It’s trying it on William.’
‘I won.’ Isabel shrugged.
This round perhaps, thought Caroline anxiously. Isabel was all too apt to think a problem solved when it was merely resting. Edith was still, they believed, in blissful ignorance of the now commonly accepted fact that her husband was the father of Ruth Horner’s illegitimate baby. Somehow he must have managed to persuade his wife that any gossip was ill-founded, but if Isabel came out with the truth, Edith would believe it. She had a flattering notion that the Rectory bred only saints, who could never lie.
‘Do you know, I’m looking forward to this job.’ Isabel seemed slightly amazed at herself. ‘I’m even getting a small salary. That helped too, because Father-in-law saw a chance of paying me less than he would a man. He always responds to a bargain. I’m getting one pound a week. And Robert can hardly stop my allowance now, so I shall be quite well-off.’
The thought of Isabel demeaning herself in the service of the village was so captivating that Caroline was diverted for a while from grief, but once alone in her room again, listening to George chatting excitedly to Phoebe on the stairs outside, it soon returned. How could life in the Rectory continue normally, when hers had so radically changed? Irrational guilt over Reggie’s death tore at her, and she had long talks with her father, hoping to find an answer. Though he provided consolation, he had gently pointed out that answers could come only from within herself. But how? She seemed incapable of thought, let alone decisions.
She had tried to talk to Phoebe, since she had suffered similarly. It had been nearly a year now since Harry Darling died and Phoebe never mentioned him. It took courage on Caroline’s part to raise the subject, for Phoebe seemed almost back to her old buoyant self, so much was she enjoying her job as postwoman.
‘Did you feel guilt over Harry’s death?’ she had asked her one evening when they found themselves alone in the drawing room.
‘Guilt?’ Phoebe fiddled with a loose button, pulling the thread until it came off in her hand. ‘No. I was angry. I still am. It just isn’t fair, young men having to die.’
Angry? Did she feel angry about Reggie? No. Reggie had volunteered like Harry, but he was years older, and trained for war. Harry had been a mere boy when he signed up.
‘But the closeness between you – did you know he had died, without being told?’
‘It was different. If you remember, I was with him in hospital. Look, Caroline, do you mind if we don’t talk about this? I can’t help; I wish I could, but no one can. Not really. You just have to live through it.’
Phoebe was right of course, but that didn’t help either. If only Felicia were here. She immersed herself in work, spending as much time as she could outside the Rectory. Her parents’ attention was not all centred on her, to her relief, for she was sharing it with George. Everyone was aware that in a little over two months George would be eighteen, and next week he was going solo to try for his ticket, his pilot’s licence.
‘What do you plan to do then, George?’ Caroline asked him.
‘Sign up for the RFC,’ he announced gleefully.
‘What about Father?’
‘He doesn’t want to join the RFC.’
She laughed at that. ‘Don’t be silly, George. You know what I mean. He might try to stop you.’
‘No. I’ll be eighteen in December, and that’s that. Even Father can’t stop me now.’ He suddenly looked anxious though. ‘It’s the chance of my life.’
‘That’s exactly what it is,’ Caroline pointed out. ‘If you went into the Army, as he wants, the war might be over by the time you’d trained.’
‘I’m sorry, Caroline. Reggie and all that. But chaps see things differently to girls. I can fly a plane now, and I jolly well want to have my shot at the enemy. Come on, Caroline, you know there’s no talking me out of it.’
‘I’m not sure I want to.’
He looked taken aback. ‘You’re changing your tune quickly.’
‘One does, with this war. We cheer a destroyed Zeppelin, the Germans cheer at the numbers they’ve mown down in High Wood. They cheer Reggie’s death. Can you blame either side? No. Tell me, George, when you and Phoebe went to see the wreckage of that Zeppelin at Cuffley, did it change your determination to get into the RFC?’
‘You know it didn’t.’
‘Not even seeing the dead crew?’
‘They were inside the church.’ George hesitated. ‘I’ll tell you this, Caroline, and you won’t like it. The church was locked and there were police guards on the coffins in case the crowds broke the doors down to get at the corpses. Inside, the police were playing football with one of the helmets.
‘I know it’s not pretty,’ he continued, seeing her instant look of revulsion, ‘but if we want to come through this war we’ve got to blinker ourselves to everything save the need to win it.’
‘No matter what the cost?’
‘Yes.’ George thought for a moment. ‘Seeing that downed Zep did affect Phoebe though. She thought she was going to be cheering and dancing in triumph; the Zep crew’s lives for her blessed Harry. But she told me afterwards it wasn’t like that. It made her think of Harry all the more, in case someone had done that to his body. Interesting, isn’t it?’
It was. Only two years ago George and Phoebe were children, now they seemed to know their own minds more than she did, and moreover Phoebe could talk to George but not to her. Was that her fault too? Had she been so busy in her job and so bound up in her grief over Reggie, first with the broken engagement and now his death, that she had let her own family drift away from her? Caroline made a further effort. ‘So what you’re saying is that there’s no escape from the war till it’s over?’
‘I suppose I am.’
No escape. Just as that Belgian captain had said in June. Was it enough that all Caroline’s energies were being used in her work in Ashden? Increasing submarine warfare and the poor wheat harvest in America were forcing the shilly-shallying Asquith government ever nearer to direct action in food production. By next year, agricultural labour would surely be nationally organised, and proud though she was of what she had achieved, it would soon be out of her hands. Once hop-picking was over, and the future of the gardens and the rest of the Swinford-Browne estate settled with the Army, her current responsibilities would be over, and she could leave the winter rotas to her mother to organise. She had at last come to a decision.
With the advent of October, at the traditional last night hop-picking party, which she managed to persuade Swinford-Browne to pay for (though with some difficulty), she had a sense of finality. It was evening, a time to say goodbye. Soon this land would in all likelihood hold hops no longer. Isabel had moved into the Rectory two days ago, Lizzie was safely installed in Farmer Lake’s cottage. The Swinford-Brownes, having ostentatiously hired a removal carrier not from Ashden, but from East Grinstead, had paid a stiff and formal visit to the Rectory one evening to celebrate their parting (though that wasn’t the word used in front of them). Everything was ending. Everything was beginning.
The next day Caroline took the train for London, went to the address she had been given and asked for the person she wished to see. Five minutes later he came down the stairs into the entrance lobby where she waited.
‘Good morning, Miss Lilley.’ He bowed as she rose from the chair to greet him.
‘Good morning, Captain Rosier. You told me to come to you if I wanted to take a job to help the war effort more directly. I am here.’
Chapter Five
Margaret Dibble’s back was straight. She intended that these swish people in the carriage, who were looking down their London noses at her, to know she was well used to travelling, thank you very much. She supposed she was, now she’d been all the way up to Hertford and back with Percy. Even she didn’t quite know how she’d managed it. Worry over Fred must have been what made the journey there pass in a flash; coming back seemed to be taking much longer. You had time to brood, and she couldn’t very well burst into ‘Praise my soul, the King of Heaven’ in this solemn railway carriage. The tensions of London were only just beginning to subside. She seldom went to big towns, and when she did, she didn’t usually have to find her way on strange buses and underground railways clutching a suitcase. Percy was no help; he was more bewildered than she was. ‘Here,’ he’d said, ‘let me carry those,’ but what she needed was help carrying burdens other than luggage. Ones you were weighed down by inside. But there, that’s what women were for, to carry on uncomplaining.
The Rector had fixed up a nice place for them to stay in Hertford, with an elderly vicar and his wife. The Reverend Jones had some funny illness which meant he couldn’t be a vicar any more; usually those called by God had to go on in His service until they were called up higher still, owing to them not having enough money to live on otherwise. Margaret knew all about that from the Rectory.
The Reverend Jones and his wife were Welsh, of all things. Naturally she was a little wary of them at first, but they turned out to be no different from anyone and they enjoyed a good sing-song just like her. When they sang that song about Wales, it brought tears to her eyes, for all they were singing in Welsh. She could hear it now, ‘Gwlad, gwlad …’ They told her in English it meant: ‘Wales, Wales, O but my heart is with you.’
She felt her eyes pricking all over again, not for Wales, but for Fred, and had to stare out of the window as if she was ever so interested in East Grinstead Railway Station. She couldn’t wait to get back to her kitchen and be surrounded by her own pots and pans, and be able to shout at Myrtle. On second thoughts, she wouldn’t do that, in case Myrtle changed her mind now the baby had gone, and decided to go to the munitions factory after all. Myrtle wasn’t what she would call ideal, but there was no such thing as an ideal tweeny to be had with the Kaiser still up to his tricks.
Once she was home, she’d be able to wipe the sight of Fred standing in that hut from her mind and think of him again back in his workshop; he’d be mending wounded animals there, not training to kill Germans, as even on home service he’d have to if the Kaiser broke through and invaded. First though she’d have a strong cup of tea and a good cry. She couldn’t share her troubles with Percy; he had just retreated into himself and was pretending nothing was wrong.
She had hardly recognised Fred when he came into the adjutant’s hut. Short hair, uniform – she felt quite proud of him. Then she took in the fact he was limping and his puffy bruised face. There’d been trouble.
‘Hallo, Fred,’ she’d said, trying to be natural.
But he’d just looked at her blankly. The horror had hit her: he didn’t know who she was.
It was Percy who had saved the situation then. She couldn’t do or say anything she was so shocked, but Percy just strolled up to Fred and shook his hand. ‘Hallo, son.’ Fred had looked at him, then looked at her, but still said nothing.
‘What have they done to your hair, love?’ She had found she could speak at last, but it wasn’t the hair she was thinking about; it was the bruises. ‘How did this happen?’ Fear made her voice rise, but still he looked at her with that blank stare. Then, to her relief, he grinned, though he still said nothing.
‘Right, Percy.’ She had nerved herself up to march up to that stuffed shirt adjutant and demand to see the doctor; she informed him she’d see anyone if he wasn’t around, but she wasn’t going away without asking a few questions. In Ashden she’d never have the nerve to demand to speak to Dr Marden, but then in Ashden Fred wouldn’t be black and blue.
‘Just a bit of horseplay,’ the doctor said when at last a reluctant adjutant had collared him. He sounded surprised that anyone would make a fuss about a black eye. ‘Lads will be lads.’
‘Fred won’t,’ his mother had replied. ‘Why isn’t he speaking?’
‘Private Dibble has his own little ways, you know.’
‘I do know,’ she replied grimly. ‘What I also want to know is what little ways you’ve used to make him like this.’
Fred was standing by with a silly smile on his face all the time, and never said a word.
‘He was off duty, at a public house, and the other lads have got it into their heads he’s an army-dodger since he’s been categorised home service only.’ The adjutant had clearly decided honesty would get rid of trouble more quickly. He was wrong.
‘A public house!’ she’d shrieked. ‘Fred never had a drink in a public house in his life. We’re loyal abstainers like His Majesty.’
‘Your son is an adult, Mrs Dibble.’
‘He’s a child, and you know it. Are you going to send him back home? He’s no use to you.’
The adjutant lost his temper. ‘This is the Army,’ he roared. ‘My job’s to make a man of him, one way or another.’
She’d fixed him with a look. ‘God didn’t make a man of him. How do you expect to?’
She had marched out, head held high. Her outbursts did no good, but it relieved her mind. So did the familiarity of the lush countryside, now they were back in Sussex. When the train stopped at Hartfield, she could have wept for pleasure. Home was still there, waiting like a cocoon to swallow her up. Back at the Rectory she’d have support, she’d ask the Rector to intervene to get Fred released. Quickly, in case he got beaten up again in just a bit of horseplay.
Nevertheless, as they got out at Ashden Station she put on her most forbidding face, just in case her pleasure at being home showed too much. ‘Good morning, Mr Chappell.’
‘Morning, Mrs Dibble. How’s our Fred then?’
‘Doing splendidly, thank you very much.’
Even the Rector couldn’t achieve miracles, it appeared. ‘Once the medical examiner has passed him, and the appeal procedures have failed, there’s no legal way to obtain his release,’ he explained, after listening compassionately.
‘He’ll be dead without going to France at this rate.’ Margaret could see from the Rector’s face, the way he was looking at her so gently, that there was no hope.
