Daisychain Summer

  ‘She’s a dear, kind person. Albert was lucky, finding her. I only wish Nathan could be as fortunate. Why do you suppose he has never married?’

  ‘Haven’t the faintest idea. Shall I tell him you’re worried about him?’ Julia teased.

  ‘You’ll do no such thing!’ Helen clucked. ‘Whatever would he think of me? Now – about your Marchers from Jarrow? They’re making a stop the other side of Harrogate, I believe, so why are twenty of them coming to Holdenby? They can’t be expected to walk another nine miles.’

  ‘There isn’t enough room for them at the scheduled stop so someone is driving them over in a chara. And they’ll want washing bowls and the use of towels. Doc Pryce says he’ll have a look at their feet. They’re mostly marching in shabby boots, you see, and their feet are suffering dreadfully, I believe.’

  ‘You’re enjoying it, aren’t you – helping, I mean?’

  ‘I am, mother. Oh, I find no joy that men have to beg for work, but I’ll be good with the washing bowls and serving meals. It’ll be just like it was in France when Alice and I were –’ When she and Alice were young and in love and everyone pulling together because there was a war on, and the next mail might bring a letter from Andrew. ‘Yes, I shall enjoy it …’

  Even though Andrew had been dead for almost eighteen years; even though she still loved him every bit as much and wanted him, still. Even though the Fascists were fighting in Spain, whilst in Germany –

  But not to think of Germany and what might be, or Andrew’s life would have been taken in vain.

  ‘Will you need your furs when you go to Kentucky? What do you plan to take?’ Julia asked brightly. ‘And when you next write to Amelia tell her, will you, that Mrs Simpson’s divorce is being heard in Ipswich, on the twenty-seventh. I read it in the morning paper. Did you see it?’

  ‘Afraid I missed it.’

  ‘You were probably meant to! Just a small piece.’

  ‘But why Ipswich?’ Helen frowned.

  ‘Why not? Anywhere but London, I would say, when that divorce is obviously a put-up job. But you know the way Amelia laps up everything the King and Mrs Simpson get up to, so don’t forget to send her the cutting.’

  ‘Amelia will probably know already. The whole world knows and is laughing at us. Poor Queen Mary. Has the King never thought about the way he’s upsetting his mother?’

  ‘I doubt it. He’s a fool in love. If he gave to the unemployed the money he spends on jewels for his Wallis, then people might respect him more. I hope he does give up the throne for her. We’d be better off without him – and her!’

  Julia! The King to abdicate? But that would be awful! Give up the throne for a divorcee? He couldn’t. He wouldn’t!’

  But he could, Helen thought, and he well might. What was yet in doubt, was when!

  The Marchers from Jarrow alighted from the charabanc, arranged themselves into lines of four, then marched, straight-backed, across the school playground to Holdenby village hall. Their faces were pinched and pale and some of them walked badly in boots with paper-thin soles, but they walked with dignity of purpose and with heads held high.

  Julia blinked back tears. No rabble, this. Gentlemen in cloth caps, more like. It made her wish there was more she could do.

  ‘Are you ready, Hawthorn?’ she said in her best Sister Carbrooke voice as she fastened on her apron.

  ‘Ready,’ Alice whispered tremulously, and all the time knowing that if there really was a heaven, then Andrew and Giles and all those men who hadn’t come home would be looking down and wondering what had happened to that country fit for heroes to live in. And being glad, perhaps, that someone cared.

  When Alice got home at nearly midnight, Tom was waiting beside the kitchen fire.

  ‘You look tired, love. Kettle’s on.’

  ‘I’m not so bad. It is nothing like it was, in France.’

  ‘In France you and Julia were bits of lasses. Sit you down, and take off your shoes. What was it like, then?’

  ‘Awful, Tom. Those Marchers were wonderful. Not a grumble between them. Just gratitude. That’s what got me – that they should be grateful that people are trying to help them along their way; yet if you had been amongst them, I’d have been bitter and angry. We’ve let them down, you know.’

  ‘No. Not us, Alice. Not the likes of you and me. Ordinary folk are doing what they can to help. It’s the system that’s to blame. They wanted us when they needed soldiers, then threw us on the scrap heap. Them and Us. It’ll never be any different. Not for you and me, love, though Daisy’ll be all right. But I’ll tell you what, bonny lass. If there’s ever another war, they’ll not get me!’

  ‘There won’t be another war. But forget Hider, please? Let me tell you about tonight? They were such a grand bunch of men. They didn’t mind sleeping rough – said they’d be grateful for washing water, so they could shave, in the morning.

  ‘Doctor Pryce was there, seeing if any of them needed medicine, though it was mostly sore feet. Julia gave them the money Lady Helen collected. They said they’d never expected such kindness, all along the way, though to my way of thinking it might be different when they get farther south.’

  ‘Don’t judge them, Alice, just because there aren’t as many folk out of work down there. The southerners will be just as generous,’ Tom reasoned. ‘Leastways, I hope they will. But did the marchers have a good feed?’

  ‘That they did! Plenty of soup and sandwiches and pies and buttered teacakes and in the morning, the Mothers Union is going to see to the breakfasts. Porridge and eggs and bread and jam. We’ve done our bit for them, around Holdenby.’

  Gratefully she accepted the tea Tom poured, wrapping her fingers around the mug, rocking gently as she sipped. Then she said softly, ‘Are you ready for a shock, Tom?’

  ‘Why, love? What’s happened?’

  ‘Something you’ll hardly believe.’

  Never believe the man who’d looked at her strangely. At every turn he’d been looking and she had frowned, because she knew him, didn’t she? Someone from France. One of the soldiers she had nursed, maybe?

  It hadn’t been until the men were seated at the trestle tables and she walked round with a jug of soup, topping up plates, that she said to him without any preamble at all, ‘Should we know each other, you and me?’

  ‘I don’t know. Have I been gawping?’

  ‘You have,’ she smiled. ‘I was a nurse, in the war, perhaps that was it. Were you wounded?’

  ‘No. I was one of the lucky ones – if you can call this lucky.’ Then he’d coloured, as if he knew he shouldn’t have said that; not to someone who’d been decent enough to show sympathy.

  ‘Which regiment?’

  ‘The West Yorkshires. I was a marksman.’

  ‘Then that narrows it down a lot. Did you ever come across Tom Dwerryhouse?

  ‘He knew you, Tom. And then he remembered me. He was the soldier who called at Celverte, at the convent – gave me the letters I’d written to you and your Testament, with the buttercups pressed inside it.’

  ‘Geordie! Geordie Marshall, by the heck! So the old son of a gun made it!’

  ‘He did. He was sorry, when I told him you and me were married, that once he’d told me not to hope, over much, that you were alive. He’d heard, you see, you were in the lorry that got a direct hit from a shell. It was kind of him to find me, in Celverte, but that was when I gave up hoping – accepted that you really were dead.’

  ‘And so did everyone else. What did you tell him – about me, I mean?’

  ‘That you’d been taken prisoner; same story we told everybody – and the Red Cross never told about it. I told him you’d likely go over to see him in the morning, and if you do, it’ll be up to you what you tell him, Tom.’

  ‘I’ll go. Just imagine Geordie turning up like that! I’ll tell you something, Alice. He was the only man I’ve ever met who was a better shot than I am. We’d go out into No Man’s Land – sometimes sniping, but mostly keeping watch over th
e stretcher bearers and doctors who were trying to get the wounded back to our lines.

  ‘I used to feel bad; my stomach would churn something awful, but not Geordie. Cool as a cucumber, that one. He’d smile as he pulled the trigger. He hated Germans …’

  ‘Then you’ll have to get there before nine o’clock. The chara will be there at quarter-past. The march leaves Harrogate at ten. It was him remembered me. I’d never have known him, though Lord knows I should have, after Celverte.’

  Hope died, that day. Tom, she had accepted, was never coming back to her.

  She put down her cup, going to stand behind his chair, wrapping her arms around him, laying a cheek on his head.

  ‘We are so lucky, you and me, Tom. And when I saw those men, desperate for work and their dole stopped just because they were on the march, it made me shudder to think about Daisy’s money.’

  ‘It makes me shudder an’ all, lass, but it was given to her and there’s nowt we can do about it. And fair play, it hasn’t caused the bother I thought it might. She’s been sensible about it, never said so much as a word to anybody.’

  ‘She told Keth …’

  ‘Well, happen she would. Keth’s always been close. But Geordie! Imagine him turning up like that!’ He shook his head, bemused. ‘Who’d have thought it?’

  Alice lay awake that night, too tired to sleep, her mind too active. And she thought of that young nurse, carrying a rape child and, with Tom’s death, all hope gone.

  She closed her eyes, counting her blessings, wishing for a miracle that those brave, proud men from Jarrow – every single one of them – might find work.

  Then she thanked God yet again for her happiness and begged, as she always did, that she might be allowed to keep it.

  34

  The trees in Brattocks Wood stood black and gaunt and wet with mist; the air was cold and damp and the torch Keth carried made little impact on the drifting fog.

  November. Month of the dead when lost souls roamed the earth in search of absolution – or so Jinny Dobb said.

  He pushed open the gate of Keeper’s Cottage, seeing lamplight dimly ahead. He was not able to meet Daisy so often now he was working, lucky to find work as odd-job man in a Creesby hotel. There he wore a dung-coloured, long-sleeved coat and fetched and carried and swept from eight in the morning until seven at night. Thirty-two men had applied for the job, which was given to him because he was young and strong and could be hired for a pound a week, he thought bitterly, crunching his feet into the gravel of the path.

  The tips he earned he kept for himself; half of the wages he gave to his mother and what remained was hoarded in the Penny Bank against the time when he went – when he might go – to America. And he wanted to go there even more, now he knew the demeaning grind of cheap labour. Indeed, the only good thing about it was that he had ceased to be a burden on his mother’s purse. All else about the job only made him surer than ever that it was not for him.

  The door opened. A finger of lamplight illuminated the passage and he sniffed in the sweet warm scent of burning apple logs.

  ‘Keth, love! Come in and shut the door. What a night!’ Daisy offered her mouth for his kiss, twining her arms around his neck, whispering, ‘It’s all right. Dada’s walking the game covers, though he’ll not be out long – there’ll be no poachers out tonight. And Mam’s at Rowangarth, sewing for Lady Helen for America.’

  Her lips gentled his cheek searching for his mouth and he pulled her close, loving her, wanting her.

  ‘Sit you down. Mam didn’t light the parlour fire, tonight. Tell me about today?’

  She sat, arms round knees, on the brass stool that stood at the side of the fire, smiling her pleasure at seeing him.

  ‘Today, sweetheart, was exactly like yesterday and exactly as tomorrow will be. Boring and soul-destroying. I hate it.’

  ‘So you’ll go to Kentucky?’ Not that she wanted him to leave her but she knew that if he did not he would regret it every day for the rest of his life.

  ‘If the offer’s still open when they come over in December, then I’ll ask Mrs Sutton to help me. I was talking to Bas before they went back to Kentucky and it seems that in America, going to University isn’t just for rich people but for anyone willing to work hard. Girls, too.

  ‘He said some Universities give free places for special talents – like being good at sport, or music. Getting a degree is easier over there than it is here – for people like me, I mean. A lot of the students have a job – it’s die accepted thing. It makes me mad to think that here, the well-off take education for granted. But even in America, it’s going to cost money. It goes against the grain, you know, to accept charity.’

  ‘But it isn’t charity, can’t you get that into your head, Keth Purvis? And as for the cost – Mrs Amelia wants to do it. Bas’s life is priceless. It’s her way of saying thank you for what you did. Don’t deny her?’

  ‘I won’t. Pride is something I can’t afford, but had you thought I might be away for three years? It’s the one thing that takes the shine off it – not seeing you. You’ll forget what I’m like.’

  ‘I won’t! I’ll write every day and don’t forget that by the time you’re back I’ll be nearly twenty-one and we can be married.’

  ‘Three years, though. It’s a lifetime.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to keep myself busy, won’t I? I’ll be leaving school at Christmas and Mam wants me to go to the Technical School to learn shorthand and typing.’

  ‘But I always thought you’d be a nurse, Daisy.’

  ‘Mm. I’ve thought about it, but –’ She shrugged expressively. ‘Mam says you’ve got to have a vocation for it. For Mam, it was the only way to get to France to be near Dada, but she said it wouldn’t be easy for someone like me.’

  ‘Someone who’s had a sheltered life, you mean?’ Keth asked without rancour.

  ‘No. What I think she meant was that I couldn’t take the discipline. She says I’ve got Dada’s temper and it wouldn’t do. I suppose,’ she sighed, ‘that I’d be better working in an office, ’til you get back.’

  ‘I haven’t gone yet, sweetheart.’

  ‘You will, though. You know you will.’

  ‘I want to. But you won’t need to work, Daisy – had you forgotten that?’

  ‘No, and Mam’s not likely to let me, either.’ She rose to set the kettle to boil as she heard the barking of the dogs outside. ‘But I’ve never had that money, don’t you see? It’s as if it doesn’t exist, except to pay school fees. Mam says I must plan my life as if Mr Hillier never left it to me. If I don’t, she says, I’ll get idle and spoiled. You’ll stay for a cup, Keth?’

  She bent quickly to brush his lips with her own as her father’s footsteps crunched on the gravel outside.

  ‘By the heck, but it isn’t fit to send a dog out tonight.’ Tom nodded to Keth, then held his hands to the fire. ‘Your Mam not back yet?’

  ‘No, though she won’t be long. And she likes doing it for Lady Helen. Said it’s like old times, being back in Rowangarth sewing-room.’

  ‘Aye.’ Tom smiled fondly, reaching for his tobacco jar, taking his pipe from the rack that hung beside the fire. ‘When is her ladyship sailing – from Liverpool, will it be?’

  ‘From Tilbury, on the twelfth. Aunt Julia’s going to London to see her off. Drew, too. They’re leaving the day before, and staying the night at Montpelier Mews.’

  ‘And how come young Drew can get time off school to go galavanting to London?’

  ‘He’s in the sixth form, now,’ Keth supplied, ‘seeing if he wants to go to University. Not that he will, but he doesn’t have classes every day.’

  ‘And you, Keth? Shall you be going to University?’

  ‘I want to …’

  ‘Then take Mrs Sutton up on her offer. You’d please her, if you did. And if you can’t bear to take charity – and there’s times when I think that’s the only thing holding you back – then tell yourself, and her, too, that you’ll pay it all back,
once you’re settled in a profession. But she was a mighty thankful woman that day of the fire, and she really wants you to go to college with Bas. Mrs MacMalcolm told me so.’

  ‘Keth’ll go. I’ll never speak to him again, if he doesn’t.’ Daisy slipped die cosy over the teapot. ‘Want a teacake, either of you?’

  ‘Not for me – just a pipe.’ Tom reached for his slippers. ‘Keth’ll have one, though. Reckon I ought to go over to Rowangarth, mind – walk your Mam home.’

  ‘Dada – she’ll be all right! It’s only a step, and she isn’t afraid of the dark! Leave her be. She’s enjoying herself.’

  ‘Aye. They’ll be gossiping away, the three of them.’ And Alice would be all right. There was no Elliot Sutton, now, for her to worry about. What happened out there in Brattocks was a long time ago, though he’d never regret blacking young Sutton’s eye. He should, he considered calmly, have killed him like he’d wanted to, though it wouldn’t have done a lot of good, him dangling at the end of a rope in Wakefield Gaol, because of it.

  But a lot of water had flowed under a lot of bridges since then and Tom Dwerryhouse was no longer twenty-two, no longer so hot-headed. Alice had seen to that; rubbed the edge off his temper over the years, only to see it surface in Daisy. My, but the lass could get herself into a paddy, given half a chance!

  ‘What’s so amusing, Dada – or can’t you tell us?’

  ‘Happen not yet,’ Tom grinned. ‘Maybe I’ll tell you when you’re twenty-one, though.’

  ‘When I’m twenty-one, Keth will be back from Kentucky,’ she said softly, avoiding her father’s eyes, gazing into the fire, ‘and me and Keth will likely have something to tell you!’

  ‘Tell me? What about?’ Shocked, Tom sat bolt upright in his chair. ‘If you’re meaning what I think you are, then I’ll be hoping that before Keth – or any young man – gets ideas into his head, he’ll have the good manners to talk to your Mam and me about them first!’

  ‘And I will, sir.’ Keth’s cheeks coloured hotly. ‘When there is something – when the time is right – I will.’