The Victory Garden

by Bowen, Rhys

  “Yes, I found an old trunk with books in it.”

  “Oh. An old trunk. Of course.” She nodded as if this made sense. “I’d forgotten.”

  “I plan to teach Daisy and Alice to read. They won’t get anywhere in life if they can’t.”

  “You look out for each other. I like that,” Lady Charlton said. “I have a feeling that we women will need to support each other in the years to come. We will have no menfolk to take care of us.”

  Emily returned to the cottage, armed with candles and a box of matches, to find no sign of the other two. She sat on her bed in the fading light and wrote to Robbie in pencil. It was easier than trying to juggle pen and ink. She told him all about the house, about Lady Charlton and the library and the cottage. We were told it was cursed, and it does have an uneasy feeling to it, but we’re only here for a few days and none of us has turned into a frog yet. She tried to make every sentence funny and light so that he’d smile as he sat on his bunk near the enemy lines.

  The other two women came home after dark, delighted to find Emily reading, lying on her bed with a candle on the old trunk.

  “Candles!” Daisy exclaimed. “I’m so glad we don’t have to fumble around in the dark no more. I have to confess I was a bit scared last night with that wind and all. It didn’t sound natural, did it? If Alice hadn’t been beside me, I’d have been a nervous nelly.”

  “And speaking of Nellie,” Alice said. “We got along like a house on fire with Nell Lacey. She’s a good sort, you know. Worried sick about her husband, but don’t complain. None of them do. We met Mrs Soper from the forge, and she’s lost her husband and doesn’t know what she’ll do and who will take over as blacksmith. She has sons, but not near old enough to wield the hammer in the forge. But you know, in spite of everything, we all had a good laugh.”

  “I’m glad you had a good evening,” Emily said, noting their animation.

  “We did. Sorry you weren’t with us. So you survived your sherry party then.” Alice looked at her with pity. “Brave of you.”

  “She’s lonely,” Emily said. “She’s lost everybody she loved. She has no one.” She hesitated, then added, “Do you mind if I take sherry with her every evening after our dinner? I said I couldn’t spend too long with her because I want to start teaching you to read better.”

  “We don’t mind, do we, Daisy?” Alice said, giving Daisy a nudge. “Give me a gin and lime and a good natter rather than a sherry any time.”

  That night, Emily lay in bed, watching the flickering light of her candle play on the ceiling. It was a warm, still evening with no breeze, and sweet scents drifted in through her open window. She could hear Alice and Daisy still talking and laughing downstairs. It’s not so bad here after all, she thought.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  When the three women returned from their work the following day, they found the broken chairs had been replaced with three sturdy ones. There was a rug on the floor and another oil lamp had been provided.

  “Thanks to you for getting along so well with the old lady,” Alice said. “This place is starting to look quite homely. If we’re here much longer, we’ll have a sofa and an aspidistra and pictures on the walls.”

  “I wish we had some more clothes,” Emily said. “This uniform needs a good cleaning. I’m getting tired of wearing it, and I feel uncomfortable sitting on Lady Charlton’s nice furniture in it.”

  “I wonder how much longer they’ll be needing us as land girls,” Daisy said. “I mean, we can’t do much in the field during the winter, can we?”

  “And from what they are saying at the pub, the war won’t go on much longer,” Alice said. “The Germans are in complete retreat. Mrs Soper reckons they’ll want to make peace before the end of the year.”

  “Thank God,” Emily said, smiling. Robbie would be back, and they’d get married, and she’d have a whole new life to look forward to. She had a sudden idea. “You two should come out to Australia with me,” she said. “I’ve heard it’s a wonderful life out there. Plenty of food and sunshine and not enough women to go around.”

  “We might just take you up on that,” Alice said. “I can’t see myself going back to the Smoke. Not after this. You don’t know how people live there—like rats, all crammed together in dark little streets. That’s no way to live, is it?”

  “And I’m not going back to Moorland Hall, whatever I do,” Daisy said firmly. “Not if it was the last place on earth.”

  “Was it as bad as that? Worse than digging potatoes?” Emily asked.

  Daisy nodded. “It wasn’t the work I minded. I was brought up to work hard. It was the master.”

  “He was unkind?”

  “No,” Daisy said angrily. “He couldn’t keep his hands off the servants. He had his way with one of the maids, Millie, and when she was in the family way, they sent her off somewhere. And then he started looking at me. And one morning, I had to carry the bathwater into his bathroom and he was there, naked. And he grabbed me. I managed to get away, but I’m not going back.”

  “Of course you shouldn’t. Dirty old bastard,” Alice said angrily. “Don’t you worry, Daisy. Me and Emily will make sure you’re looked after. We won’t desert you.”

  “You’re such good friends,” Daisy said, her eyes tearing up. “I never had good friends before. This has been a proper blessing to me.”

  On Sunday, there were eggs for breakfast, and they went to church in the village. The church was surprisingly large for the size of the population, and light filtered in through old stained-glass windows. Emily looked up at the saints smiling down at them. The church smelled of old furniture polish, candles and the flowers in vases on the windowsills. She felt a moment of great peace as the tinted light surrounded her, as if it were a personal blessing. Afterwards, they met the Reverend Bingley, who shook their hands and welcomed them officially.

  Luncheon was a big meal, a fish pie and marrow in a white sauce. Mrs Trelawney looked more disapproving than ever. “Imagine a Sunday lunch without a roast,” she said. “No joint of beef, no leg of lamb or pork. Instead, a bloomin’ fish pie! It’s an insult, that’s what it is.”

  “It’s a very delicious fish pie, Mrs Trelawney,” Daisy said quietly. “I really like it.”

  “Well, I’ve done my best with what is at hand,” the cook conceded. “And there is a good apple pie to follow, from our own apples, mark you.”

  After lunch, the weather was fine and bright, and they walked up on to the moor. Alice cried out at the sight of the wild ponies appearing on the ridge above then galloping off as the women approached. The heather was in bloom, and the hillside glowed magenta and purple. When they had climbed a way, they stood, looking back. The village, nestled in its hollow, looked like the wooden toy village Emily used to play with. Smoke rose from some of the chimneys. Around it, a patchwork of fields, divided by hedges or stone walls, stretched away into the distance, dotted with white sheep and cream-coloured cows. Far off, they could see more villages, a town and then the haze that crept inland from the sea.

  “This is the life, eh?” Alice said. “You don’t know how much better I feel now I’m not breathing in all that smoke and dust. I used to wake up every morning coughing. My mum died of bronchitis or something like it. Coughed all the time. I wish I could have brought her here.”

  “I like it, too,” Daisy said.

  Emily was looking around, taking in every aspect of the view—the green of the fields and woods, the purple of the hillside, the white dots of sheep. In Australia, there will just be red earth, she thought. Would she miss this green and pleasant land? Then she thought of Robbie, his arms around her, making her feel safe and loved. It will all be worth it, she told herself.

  After a simple cold supper, they walked down to the village.

  “Don’t you have to join the old lady for sherry?” Alice asked her.

  “It’s my day off,” Emily replied. “I think I’m free to do what I want.” All the same, she felt a pang of guilt that Lad
y Charlton might be sitting all alone, waiting for her in the big empty house.

  The pub was shut on Sunday, but the women of the village had assembled on the village green, sitting on the benches below the Celtic cross. Some of them were knitting. Several small children were chasing each other with squeals of delight. The two old men were sitting apart, smoking pipes. Bats flitted through pink twilight. It was a perfect rural picture, Emily thought, until you realized there were no men there, no boys older than about twelve. They were introduced to the women—the shopkeeper and the wives of several farm labourers—and Alice introduced Emily to Mrs Soper, the blacksmith’s wife. These women already seemed to know a lot about them, thanks to Alice and Daisy’s nightly pub visits.

  After a few polite words, the women reverted to local matters. Whose brother or son had come home; whose had not.

  “What about your man?” Nell Lacey was asked. “When is he getting out of that hospital?”

  “Not for a while,” Nell said. “They have to make a wooden leg for him, and his lungs have to improve before they’ll let him out.”

  “When do you plan on going up to London to visit him again?” one of the younger women asked.

  Nell frowned. “Who would run the pub if I left? We have to make a living somehow, don’t we?”

  “At least you have a man who’ll be coming home,” the blacksmith’s wife said bitterly. “What about me? I miss my Charlie something terrible. And it’s not just missing him and learning to live without him, is it? I want to know how I’m expected to carry on without him. Who is going to shoe the horses and mend the farm implements? That’s what I want to know.”

  “I know, Mrs Soper. I’ve been thinking the same thing. Mine may be coming home eventually, but how am I going to take care of him?” Nell Lacey asked. “I am already run off my feet without having to nurse him in between manhandling the barrels.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Are there no men left in the village?” Emily asked. “Apart from the two over there?”

  “There’s the reverend,” the blacksmith’s wife said. “But he and his missus keep themselves to themselves, except when she’s organizing something for charity. And then there’s Mr Patterson at the school. But he don’t mix much, do he? Not a great one for conversation.”

  “So you’re living in the cottage, are you?” one of the women asked. “How are you liking it?”

  “It’s not too bad,” Alice said. “Not exactly like home, but we’re surviving.”

  “Have you seen any ghosts yet?” the woman persisted, giving her neighbour a dig in the ribs.

  “There aren’t any ghosts, Edie. Don’t go scaring them like that,” Nell Lacey said.

  “Of course there are ghosts,” the woman went on. “Don’t they say that woman runs screaming over the moor? That one that was hanged for being a witch?”

  “That’s just an old wives’ tale,” Nell said.

  “Well, that’s what we are, old wives, isn’t it?” the woman said, chuckling.

  “No we’re not. We’re widows, most of us, aren’t we?”

  Again they lapsed into silence.

  “How are you getting on with the old lady then?” The young wife broke the silence, holding a squirming toddler on her lap. “I find her terrifying.”

  “Emily here gets along with her just fine,” Alice said. “She’s invited to take sherry every evening.”

  “Ah well, she would, wouldn’t she,” Nell Lacey agreed. “She’d want to be with her own kind.”

  “She must miss her menfolk,” the young wife said. “I miss my Johnny something terrible.”

  “She only has herself to blame, don’t she?” Nell Lacey said angrily. “They sent that poor boy to his death.”

  “The grandson, you mean?” the same young woman asked.

  “That’s right. Master Justin. As sweet and kind a boy as you’d ever meet. And when he told his father he didn’t believe in the war and he wasn’t going to fight, well, nobody listened to him. His father was furious, and his grandmother said she was disappointed in him, and between them they made sure he was called up and his request to be a conscientious objector was turned down. Off to the front he went, and that was the last anyone heard of him. Blown to pieces by a grenade, that’s what they reckon.”

  “And the old lady’s son is gone, too,” someone else commented. “Although he was a different kettle of fish. Hoity-toity like the old lady. Always was a priggish little boy, right from the start. Sent off to some posh boarding school, and when he was home, he wouldn’t play with us because we were beneath him, right, Peggy?”

  The blacksmith’s wife nodded. “Died just the same, didn’t he? Buried with full military honours, so they say. But that doesn’t bring him back, does it? And now the old lady rattles around that big place and has nobody.”

  They sat in silence as the sun dipped behind the horizon and a cold wind sprang up.

  After a couple of weeks, they had made good progress on the grounds. The lawns around the house had been mown, the front beds cleared of weeds. Some of the larger rhododendron bushes had been cut back. One day, they came in for their midday meal to find a pony and trap outside with a man standing beside it.

  “I’ve been sent to find you young ladies by that Miss Foster-Something,” he said. “You’re wanted back with the other land girls right away.”

  “Oh.” Emily felt a rush of alarm. Were they about to be disbanded, sent home? In which case, where should she go? Where could she go? “We’d better go and tell Lady Charlton that we are leaving,” she said.

  “You go. You’re teacher’s pet,” Alice said. “I might nip down to Nell at the pub when we collect our belongings.”

  Emily went in by the servants’ entrance as usual, and didn’t like to pass through the swing door unannounced. “Would you go and find Lady Charlton, please, Mrs Trelawney?” she said. “I have to speak to her.”

  “What’s this about?” the housekeeper asked sharply.

  “We’ve been summoned back. We’re leaving.”

  “Oh.” The woman couldn’t control the smirk that crossed her face. “She will be sad. I’ll tell her.”

  “I’d rather tell her myself, if you don’t mind.”

  “She’s in the library, I believe. You know where that is, don’t you? She took you there once.” There was clear dislike in her voice. She’s jealous, Emily thought. She’s jealous because Lady Charlton has enjoyed talking to me.

  “Thank you,” she said. “And thank you for your delicious meals.” Then she pushed open the door and made her way down the main hallway. Another door was open, and she saw that the room was shrouded in dust sheets. The hallway could do with a good sweeping, too, she noticed. There were cobwebs around the light fixtures. She knocked before entering the library. Lady Charlton was standing, lost in thought, staring down at one of the display tables. She looked up in surprise when she saw Emily.

  “These are things that my husband brought back from India,” she said. “Such fine workmanship, and do you know that gold and silver objects are weighed and sold by the amount of precious metal there, not by the fine craftsmanship. Isn’t that strange?”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Lady Charlton,” Emily said. “But we have to leave. We are being called back to join the other WLA members.”

  “Oh dear.” Lady Charlton looked annoyed. “I have been enjoying our little chats.”

  “Me, too,” Emily said. “You have so many fascinating stories.”

  “They say the war will be ending soon,” Lady Charlton said. “And you will marry and go out to Australia.”

  “Yes, I hope so, very soon,” Emily said.

  “Will you write to me?” the old woman asked. “I never reached Australia. I’d like to read a first-hand account of your impressions.”

  “Yes, I’d be happy to.”

  “And your account of the voyage out. We made that voyage, my husband and I, as far as Singapore once. I found it most interesting—ap
art from the part when I was seasick in the Bay of Biscay.” She smiled.

  “I had better go,” Emily said. “The trap is waiting for us.” She held out her hand. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  “Not much hospitality, I’m afraid. I now regret putting you up in a labourer’s cottage. I thought you’d all be farm girls, you see. I had no idea—”

  “No, it was fine, honestly,” Emily interrupted. “I actually came to enjoy it. It’s been neglected for a long time, I can see that, but I imagine it could once have been quite cosy.”

  “Yes.” She nodded, and as Emily went to leave, she called after her. “Wait. I should like to give you a little present.”

  She went over to one of the shelves and took from it a round, brass object. “My husband’s compass,” she said. “He took it everywhere he went. I’d like to know that you have something to guide your way.”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t . . .” Emily flushed with embarrassment. “Not your husband’s.”

  “He has no need for it any longer. Neither do I,” Lady Charlton said. “May it guide you well, as it did my dear husband.”

  She put the compass into Emily’s hand. It felt surprisingly heavy. Emily looked down at the needle, swinging and pointing away from the house. “Thank you. I will treasure this,” she said.

  She joined Alice and Daisy, who had put away their garden tools. “We’ll need to go down to the cottage to collect our things,” she told the driver. “It might be easier if you meet us in the lane behind the row of cottages. The path down the garden is horribly rutted, and I don’t know if the trap will fit through the gate.”

  “Right you are then, miss,” he said. “And don’t you ladies hurry yourselves unduly. That Foster woman, she don’t know how long it would take to find you, do she? So I might just pop across to the village shop for the newspaper and a smoke while you are packing up.” And he gave them a wink.

  They walked down the hill.

  “I’m sorry to leave now,” Alice said. “I was getting quite used to it here. I wonder where we’re off to next. I do hope it’s not pigs. Pigs scare me.”