With Hope and Love

by Ellie Dean

  Nobody had tried to delay him, and after stiffly shaking his father’s hand, he’d ignored Doris and Anthony, run down the steps to his car and driven away at speed.

  John had been profuse in his apologies, clearly deeply upset by his son’s behaviour, but unwilling to discuss what had happened between them to cause such enmity. They’d had coffee in the lounge although no one really wanted it, and then John went off for a long walk while Anthony had driven Doris home.

  ‘I’m sorry lunch was such a disaster,’ said Doris, trying to relax in her sitting room as she lit a cigarette. ‘I can’t imagine what got into Michael to behave like that.’

  ‘Whatever it was certainly rattled his father,’ Anthony replied. He stood with his back to the fireplace, his hands in his pockets, the coins once again jingling through his fingers. ‘But I do like your Colonel. He seems to be a very upright sort of man, who’s clearly greatly enamoured of you.’ He regarded his mother thoughtfully. ‘You don’t think their falling out had something to do with that, do you?’ he asked worriedly.

  ‘The thought had occurred to me,’ she admitted, twisting the engagement ring around her finger in agitation. ‘You see, I’ve had the awful feeling over the past three weeks that he doesn’t approve of me or our engagement, and after today, I very much fear that John could be having second thoughts.’

  ‘But he was so attentive,’ protested Anthony, ‘and there was no mistaking how much he adores you. It was there every time he looked at you.’

  ‘I know,’ she managed. ‘John has always been attentive and caring; it’s why I love him so. But if his son is set against us being together, the poor man is caught in a cleft stick.’ She blinked back her tears and looked up at him. ‘I promised myself I would walk away from him should this happen, but now I don’t think I can.’

  Anthony reached over and rested a consoling hand on her shoulder. ‘Poor Mother,’ he said softly. ‘It’s such a difficult situation to find yourself in, and I do sympathise. But surely it doesn’t have to lead to you splitting up?’

  ‘I have no idea of where it might lead. John’s not here, and I won’t know how he feels until he returns.’ She stubbed out her cigarette and yanked a handkerchief from her bag. ‘Oh dear,’ she sighed. ‘At my age you’d have thought I’d have learnt by now. I do feel foolish.’

  ‘Do you want me to stay with you tonight?’

  Doris would have loved him to stay, but the situation was so uncertain with John, she didn’t want her son to witness an embarrassing row. ‘Thank you, dearest boy, but you must go home. It’s a long drive and I’m sure you’ll be needed to help look after little Teddy. I’ll be fine, really I will.’

  ‘I really don’t like leaving you like this,’ he murmured. ‘What if I telephone Aunt Peggy and ask her to come up to be with you?’

  Doris shook her head. ‘Anne, Charlie and the children are returning today, and I have absolutely no intention of ruining it for her.’ She got to her feet, dabbed at her nose and straightened her shoulders. ‘I’m just a silly woman who’s allowed her imagination to run away with her,’ she said purposefully. ‘I’m sure that John is not a man to be swayed by anything his son has to say and can make his own mind up about things.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure …’ he replied uncertainly.

  ‘As sure as I can be,’ she said with brisk determination. ‘I’ll come and see you off.’

  He gave her a long, reassuring hug before kissing her cheek and heading for the front door. ‘We’d love you to come and visit once we’re straight and Suzie feels up to entertaining,’ he said, turning at the gate. He handed her a business card. ‘I’ve put our new address and telephone number on the back. Promise me you’ll ring and let me know how things go with John.’

  Doris nodded and then quickly kissed his cheek before he climbed into the car. ‘Try and get down again very soon,’ she said through the open window. ‘And bring Teddy and Suzie with you next time.’

  Standing on the pavement, she returned his cheerful wave and watched him drive away. As the sound of the car engine faded, the stillness and silence settled around her and, for the first time in many months, she felt bereft and very lonely.

  Charlie was disgusted with himself for crying like a stupid baby, and he went to the scullery sink to wash his face and pull himself together before returning to his room and hauling his bags onto the bed. He could change nothing with tears and wishful thinking, and was quite old enough to accept the situation and make the best of it. The summer holidays were still ahead of him, and he would throw himself into whatever adventures came his way.

  He began to unpack, and quickly stowed away his clothes in the drawers and wardrobe. Finding his rugby club pennants, he hunted about for the box of drawing pins he’d packed and stuck them to the wall. He lined his sporting trophies along the dresser, and placed the framed photograph of his team in pride of place at the centre. The room was looking better already. Diving back into the bag, he stacked his books on the floor next to the dresser and decided he would put up a shelf tomorrow to store them properly.

  His reading was an eclectic mix of engineering and aeroplane manuals, and military biographies which he found endlessly fascinating and absorbing – as he did the books on nature and fishing. There were a couple of Western paperbacks; a thick tome called A Treasury of Adventure for Boys, which he still liked dipping into occasionally; very tattered copies of Treasure Island, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Black Beauty, all of which he’d had since childhood and still loved, and a collection of Biggles books which he’d started collecting two years ago.

  In with all these were school textbooks and a well-thumbed atlas in which he’d charted his father’s progress through India and Burma, although he couldn’t always be certain of exactly where he was as his letters didn’t reveal much. But Charlie had used Jim’s clues and newspaper reports and articles to guess the location, and thought he’d made a fair stab at getting it right.

  Charlie looked at the three stacks on the floor and went back to the wardrobe to retrieve the comic annuals his mother had left out for him. Adding them to the pile, he thought it might be interesting to see what had amused him as an eight-year-old. But not right now, for he could hear his mother calling him to his tea.

  Hungry as a bear, he closed his door and hurried upstairs to sit down eagerly to the large plate of Woolton pie his mother placed in front of him. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too bad living here, he decided, and gave his mother a warm smile of thanks before he tucked in.

  An hour later, he’d gone to the Anchor with Ron to meet Rosie, who he didn’t really remember, and to pick up the dogs. Rosie turned out to be all soft curves and cushion-like bosoms which were very cuddly indeed, and she was extremely pretty for a woman of her age, which made him horribly shy, and he knew he’d gone bright red when she kissed his cheek and told him and Ron to get out from under her feet so she could run the bar without distraction.

  Now he was tramping up the long steep hill, barely able to keep up with Ron as the dogs dashed off. The old man was amazingly fit, he realised, but then he supposed he had to be as he was married to a lively woman like Rosie. Charlie reddened again as he thought of the books Bob had lent him when he’d turned fourteen. They’d been about sex and how babies were made, with quite graphic pictures and drawings, and he’d found it very embarrassing, really, but rather exciting.

  ‘Come on, wee boy,’ shouted Ron. ‘I thought you’d be fit after all those years on a farm. Are you to be letting an old man beat you to the top?’

  Charlie was out of breath and had a stitch in his side after that long haul up the hill, but spurred on by his grandfather’s challenge, he pushed himself harder until he passed him and reached the crest.

  Ron arrived at his side barely out of breath. ‘Ach, wee boy, I’ll soon have you fit for the next rugby season,’ he rumbled, digging his pipe out of his poacher’s coat pocket.

  Charlie was aware o
f Ron watching as he struggled to hide the fact he was too out of breath to voice his surprise.

  Ron gave a chuckle once his pipe was lit satisfactorily. ‘To be sure, I’m thinking you didn’t know about the club that started up during the war on the old recreation field. They’re big lads of eighteen, most of them, but going by your size, you should have no bother fitting in.’

  ‘But it’s not rugby season,’ Charlie managed, his heart rate now slowly returning to a normal pace.

  Ron smiled round the stem of his pipe. ‘I’ll take you down there tomorrow and introduce you. They meet most Sunday mornings and train every Monday night, regardless of the season, and actually won the county cup this year.’

  This was all news to Charlie and his spirits soared as he set off shoulder to shoulder with his grandfather, a definite spring in his step. ‘Are we going to Tamarisk Bay to see Uncle Frank?’ he asked.

  Ron took the pipe out of his mouth and shook his head. ‘He’ll be down with the trawlers by now, getting them ready for the night’s fishing, and I doubt your Aunt Pauline will welcome a visit from us.’

  Charlie frowned at this, but as Ron seemed reluctant to say anything further, he shrugged it off and began to take pleasure in his surroundings. These hills were very familiar, and he even had the vaguest memory of having been carried up here by his grandfather when he could only have been a baby. ‘Did you used to bring me up here when I was really little?’ he asked.

  Ron stopped abruptly and looked at him in surprise. ‘Aye, I did that, and now I’m bringing Brendon’s young Joseph up.’ He grinned, his blue eyes twinkling. ‘Carried you in the dispatches case I brought home from the trenches, so I did. Cut holes in the bottom for your wee legs to poke through, and you kicked me all the way up and down.’

  Ron chuckled and started to walk again. ‘I did the same for your father and uncle before you, and every generation since.’

  ‘Even Daisy?’

  ‘Aye. Even Daisy, and now Rose and Emily are home I shall bring them here too. This is their heritage,’ he said, waving an arm towards the sweeping landscape that ended sharply at the chalk cliff-edge. ‘And they need to know this is what we fought for, and learn the family traditions.’

  ‘I doubt if Anne will let them go poaching or hunting for eels, Grandad,’ Charlie said with a laugh.

  ‘Maybe not,’ he conceded, ‘but to be sure it will do them no harm to see where they come from, and to take in this clean, salty air.’

  Charlie tramped beside him, listening to his familiar voice as he told him about the day he’d rescued a young British airman who’d been shot down and injured; how he’d been trapped underground following the explosive crash-landing of a troop carrier which had killed all on board; and of how he’d once stood on this hill and saluted the swarms of Spitfires and bombers as they’d thundered overhead on their way to the other side of the Channel.

  ‘I wish I could have stayed here to see it all,’ Charlie said. ‘We hardly knew there was a war on down in Somerset until a rogue German fighter plane took pot shots at us all in the fields. That was scary, but exciting too,’ he added.

  Ron grimaced, tapped the spent tobacco from his pipe and glanced at his watch. ‘There’s no excitement in war, wee boy,’ he rumbled. ‘Just death and destruction and the awful waste of young lives. You were better off in Somerset.’

  With that he made a sharp turnabout, whistled to the dogs and began the steep descent back towards Beach View. ‘Frank won’t be leaving until the tide’s full, so we’ll go down to see him for a cup of his good tea and whisky.’ He eyed Charlie from beneath his thick brows. ‘Just don’t tell your mother.’

  Charlie had tasted the whisky he’d found hidden in the linen cupboard back at Owlet Farm and hadn’t liked it at all. But the idea of sharing such a thing in secret with Ron and Frank and being thought old enough to do so was something he couldn’t resist. He’d just have to get used to the taste.

  Peggy had been surprised to see Martin come down with Anne for tea, for he’d never eaten with them all since coming back to Beach View. She realised he must have been upstairs all the time, which was very odd behaviour. But then, she’d become used to him floating in and out unobserved, and it seemed Anne was unfazed by it all.

  She’d watched them surreptitiously throughout the meal and noted with enormous relief that they seemed to have found some sort of tentative harmony, although she doubted everything was as rosy as they were making out. Anne was certainly looking a bit brighter, and Martin had really put an effort into making conversation, and helping her with the children who were rather fractious after their long, tiring day.

  Daisy was just as temperamental, messing about with her food and demanding to be allowed to sleep upstairs with Rose. In the end, Peggy bundled her away from the table to wash and change her for bed, and by the time she’d brought her back downstairs, Daisy was fast asleep on her shoulder. She tucked her in, smoothed the dark curls from her forehead and kissed her softly before switching on the night light and leaving the door ajar. Life was certainly going to be hectic with such young children in the house.

  Peggy returned to the kitchen to discover it was deserted, the table cleared, the dishes washed, and everything tidied away. She was on the point of going back up to see if Cordelia was all right and that Anne didn’t need help with her two little ones, when Anne appeared in the doorway looking rather frazzled.

  ‘Whatever’s the matter, love?’ Peggy asked, reaching for the kettle.

  ‘I’ve just got the girls into bed after a real tussle in the bathroom,’ she replied. ‘They’re both overtired, and Martin didn’t really help by making bath time a game, but they were asleep by the time I’d put them in their cots.’

  She fetched cups and saucers from the shelves and milk from the marble shelf in the larder before she perched on a kitchen chair. ‘I have no idea where everyone else has gone, but I checked on Cordelia before I came down,’ she said with an affectionate smile. ‘She was exhausted too, and is now snoring away very happily. I took her glasses off and turned out her light.’

  ‘Where’s Martin?’ Peggy asked, pouring the boiling water into the large brown teapot and giving the leaves a good stir.

  ‘He’s gone for a walk, but promised not to stay out too late.’

  ‘How are things between you?’

  Anne offered her cigarette packet and box of matches to Peggy. ‘Not perfect,’ she admitted, blowing smoke, ‘but certainly a little less fraught than before. It’s going to take time for both of us to get used to each other again, and I think being with Roger has helped him tremendously.’

  Peggy poured the tea and came to sit with her at the table. ‘I expect it will be the same for me and your father. We’ve experienced such different wars and must have been changed by them. Has Martin told you anything of what he and the others went through?’

  Anne shook her head. ‘I don’t think he ever will, and I’m not sure I want to know after you told me about the state Freddy was in before he died. I’m just thankful he’s home and starting to heal.’

  Peggy squeezed her hand. ‘You’ll both muddle through, Anne,’ she soothed. ‘And your marriage will be stronger for it. But he can’t mope about forever, and must start thinking about what he’ll do for a living.’

  Anne smiled. ‘He and Roger have already started planning something, although Martin’s being very mysterious about it, and trying hard not to show how much the idea excites him. We’re due to go to Briar Cottage tomorrow morning when all will be revealed, and as it concerns Kitty and Charlotte as well, I suspect it might be something to do with flying.’

  She grinned happily. ‘I never thought Martin would get in a plane again, so if I’m right, this could be a real step forward in his recovery.’

  Peggy knew exactly what the plans were, for she’d discussed them with the girls many months ago when they’d thought Freddy would be a part of their business plan – but she wouldn’t spoil Martin’s surprise.

 
; Doris had switched on the electric fire to chase away the chill of evening as she waited for John to return. The thoughts and anxieties were churning in her head along with the conflicting ideas of what she should do if John ended things between them.

  Unable to sit there doing nothing, she went to the window and closed the curtains even though it was still quite light outside. She then went into the kitchen to make a pot of tea and pore over the lovely snapshots Anthony had brought for her.

  There was one in particular that stood out. It was of little Teddy in the sweetest romper suit, sitting on a metal rocking horse in the garden, and smiling up at whoever was taking the picture. Doris decided she would go to the shops at lunchtime on Monday and find a frame so she could display it on the mantelpiece with the others.

  Carrying her tea back into the warmth of the sitting room, she sat down, looked nervously at her watch and lit a cigarette. She’d smoked too much this afternoon, but her nerves were in shreds, and there was still no sign of John even though it was now after seven.

  ‘Where on earth have you got to?’ she muttered fretfully. ‘You must realise how worried I’d be.’

  She sipped from the teacup and clattered it back in the saucer as the most awful possibility occurred to her. He might already have returned to the next-door bungalow without coming to see her first, and was sitting in there avoiding her because he wanted to break off their engagement and didn’t know how to tell her. She knew he hated confrontation, and whatever had gone on with Michael earlier must have really upset him, but that was no excuse, and if he was hiding from her, then he wasn’t the man she’d thought he was.