by Kate Hardy
She grinned. ‘It wasn’t, actually, but I’m organising it this year, so Archie isn’t allowed to enter any of the classes. He did win the classes for Waggiest Tail and Most Handsome Dog last year, though. If he hadn’t, I think there would’ve been a riot in the infant school and the nursing home. I can just see them now, chanting, “Archie has the waggiest tail!”’
He couldn’t help smiling. Toni Butler made him feel light at heart. She really was a ray of sunshine. Why on earth had her ex given her that stupid ultimatum instead of following her here and applying for a surgeon’s post at one of the local hospitals? It wouldn’t have been that arduous a commute; in fact, it would probably have been a shorter journey to work than he’d had in London.
But that was straying into dangerous territory.
Yes, he’d confided in Toni, but he didn’t want to risk getting closer, even though at the same time he yearned for that closeness. Despite his reservations, he found himself asking her to stay just a bit longer—for two cups of coffee after dinner—and he refused to let her even look at the washing up.
‘I’d better get back,’ she said at last. ‘I need to pick up Archie from Shona, and I promised to wash her hair for her this evening. Until it happens to you, I don’t think you realise how much you can’t do when you break your arm; even though it’s not her writing hand, there are so many things she finds tricky. And being in plaster during the summer...’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Really not fun.’
‘Poor woman. Let me know if I can do anything to help,’ he said.
‘Bake me that dozen scones,’ she said. ‘I’ll email you the wartime recipe.’
‘Great. Enjoy your reading morning with Archie at the school tomorrow.’ He saw her to the door. ‘And thank you for today. For listening and not...’ He shrugged awkwardly. ‘Not judging.’
‘Any time,’ she said. ‘That’s what friends are for.’
It suddenly struck him that she was right: they had become friends over the last couple of weeks. And it warmed him all the way through. Even though a little voice in his head was whispering that he’d like her to be more than his friend...
* * *
The following week, on the Saturday morning, Ben made scones to the wartime recipe that Toni had sent over—which, to his surprise, included grated carrot. He made two dozen, and they’d cooled by the time Toni came to pick him up.
‘Two dozen? Thank you, you superstar,’ she said with a smile. Then she looked him up and down. ‘And you look pretty much perfect, as a nineteen-forties village doctor—pleated trousers, checked shirt, Fair Isle sleeveless jersey, fedora and a tweed jacket.’
‘Thank you. I hired my costume, though obviously the stethoscope is modern.’
‘You hired your costume from Moira’s cousin?’ she guessed.
‘Yes. You look very nice, too.’ She was wearing a pale blue cotton tea dress decorated with bright red peonies, cream sandals with a strap around the ankle and a low kitten heel, and her hair was put up in a neat roll. Her lipstick matched the peonies on her dress, and Ben really had to fight the urge to kiss her.
‘Thank you. Stacey made the dress for me.’
‘Is she coming today?’
‘Definitely. You’ll get to meet her later. Shall we go?’ she asked. ‘We just need to drop these off at the village hall, and then we can head down the coast to catch the train.’
They dropped off his scones and her mini homity pies, then parked on the outskirts of the next town round the coast and walked to the train station.
The streets were absolutely crammed with people, and the only cars that were parked in the High Street were vintage ones. A couple of policemen arrested a spiv who was offering people watches from the inside of his jacket; servicemen in uniform walked alongside Land Girls carrying baskets of eggs and old-fashioned milk cans; and several children were dressed as evacuees, carrying a teddy and a gas mask box and with labels tied around their necks. The shops and cafés had all joined in, with sandbags piled outside the doors and brown tape stuck to the windows in cross formation; even the window displays were vintage, from sweets to clothing to groceries. There was bunting everywhere, pop-up stalls offered to do vintage make-up and hair, and in a corner of the village square a stage was set up for singers to perform using an old-fashioned microphone.
‘This is amazing,’ he said. ‘How long has this event been going?’
‘A couple of decades, now. It started with a few steam railway enthusiasts setting up a weekend, not long after Stacey and I moved in with Gran, and it just snowballed, with more people joining in every year. Gran used to love this. And we loved going with her, because she used to tell us all her childhood memories and about what life was like growing up in wartime, and we’d look through all the old photo albums—from Mum’s childhood as well as Dad’s.’ She took his hand. ‘Come on. Let’s go and get our tickets for the steam train.’
There were soldiers and sailors everywhere, women sporting fox fur tippets that Ben rather hoped were fake, others wearing overalls with scarves tied round their heads, and men dressed as the Home Guard. The train was crammed with people, and the carriages were vintage with a corridor for the guard and two bench seats per compartment that stretched across the whole width of the compartment and a metal and rope netting shelf above the seats for luggage.
‘Room for two,’ the guard said, and made everyone squash up. He grinned at them. ‘We can seat six a side. And remember there’s a war on.’
Toni insisted that Ben have the window seat, and he was stunned by the glorious view of the sea across the cornfields.
‘This is quite an experience. I can’t ever remember travelling on a steam train before,’ he said. ‘I loved all the stories about trains when I was small, but we never went anywhere like this as a family.’
‘My mum and dad loved it. Steam trains had been phased out in favour of diesel by the time my parents were born, but Gran remembered being on a steam train when she was younger and she and my grandad used to take us on this one when we were small,’ Toni said.
‘When I was a kid and my favourite books talked about the trains making a “chuff-chuff” sound, I thought it was just the story, but they really do make that sound. It’s amazing,’ he said.
‘And look, you can see the steam coming past the window,’ she said.
There was a faint smell of sulphur in the air, which Ben assumed was from the coal. And it really did feel as if he’d gone back in time.
At the end of the line, there was a small funfair with old-fashioned steam gallopers and swing-boats, and stalls with old-fashioned games.
‘Going to win me a coconut, Dr Mitchell?’ she teased.
When he won her a coconut first time and presented it to her with a bow, she laughed. ‘You’ve done this before, haven’t you?’
‘No. But I played cricket a lot when I was younger.’
‘Remind me to introduce you to Mike, who runs the village cricket team,’ she said.
The tea tent had notices everywhere telling people not to waste sugar as it was on ration, and there were old-fashioned cakes on sale.
‘This is great,’ Ben said. ‘I haven’t had this much fun in...’ he paused ‘... I don’t know when.’
‘Good.’ She smiled at him, and again his heart skipped a beat.
Back in Great Crowmell, once they’d dropped her car at her house and were walking towards the harbour, she grew more serious. ‘Are you sure you’re all right about meeting Stacey, Nick and Scarlett? I mean—I understand if it’ll be too...’ She paused, as if trying to find the right word.
Ben knew what she meant. He’d thought he’d be a dad, and then it had been taken away from him. Being around a small child would remind him of what he didn’t have.
‘It’s fine,’ he reassured her, though he appreciated the fact that she’d thought about what he’d told her. ‘Remem
ber, I treat babies and small children at the surgery—and parents who bring their babies with them.’
‘Just as long as I’m not ripping the top off the scab.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said.
And when he met Stacey, he liked her immediately; she was as warm and kind as Toni. Their grandmother must’ve been a really special woman, he thought.
‘Ice creams are on me,’ Nick said, leading them towards Scott’s.
‘I keem!’ Scarlett crowed happily from her very old-fashioned pram.
‘It’s borrowed,’ Stacey told him, having clearly noticed his glance at the pram. ‘It’s amazing what’s survived from seventy years ago. This is the kind of thing our great-grandmother would have used—though I have to say it’s way heavier than Scarlett’s pram and it doesn’t fold up, so it’d be a nightmare to try and put this in a car.’
‘I’ve never been to this sort of fundraising thing before,’ Ben said. ‘And to think that the whole village is involved—well, several villages—is incredible.’
‘It’s a good community, here,’ Stacey told him.
Which he was really beginning to feel part of, thanks to Toni. And here, where nobody except Toni knew his past, he was finally healing. The bleak emptiness that had stretched out in front of him in London didn’t feel quite so bleak any more. He met Toni’s neighbour Shona properly, too, and Toni made a point of introducing him to the cricket club captain, Mike.
Weirdly, Ben felt more at home here than he ever had at Chalk Farm. How was that even possible?
* * *
At seven, they headed for the village hall, which had been thoroughly decorated with bunting, sandbags and tape on the windows. Inside, there were trestle tables for the food, covered in white tablecloths, and with vintage china cake stands and dishes for the food.
‘So the community has all come together for this?’ Ben asked. ‘All the food is donated?’
‘We all either grew up here and benefited from the generosity of people in the past, or we’ve got kids who use it now. The village hall organises stuff for all age groups and as I mentioned, the money raised means we can run events for the kids free during the summer holidays, and keep everything else down to a reasonable cost,’ Toni explained. ‘So whether it’s the toddler group, the senior citizens’ afternoon tea dances, or youth club evenings, which can be anything from a talent competition through to self-defence classes and archery lessons, there’s something for everyone.’ She looked at him. ‘Surely you had stuff like this in London?’
‘Not really,’ he said.
‘Well, there you go—another benefit of living here,’ she said.
Just about everyone in the room wanted to talk to Toni, he discovered. And she made sure she introduced him to everyone in the village he hadn’t met yet, finding common interests so they had something to talk about, and he wasn’t left standing around on his own, feeling awkward.
When the music started, Ben said, ‘May I have this dance, Miss Butler?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Though I should warn you that I have two left feet and your toes might regret you asking me.’
‘Or maybe they won’t. Follow my lead,’ Ben said with a smile.
* * *
It was nice that Ben had joined in, Toni thought. He’d made scones, he’d hired a costume, and now he was going to dance with her—so very unlike Sean’s reaction to the nineteen-forties weekend. When Toni had suggested that he join her family at the event, he’d balked at the idea of wearing anything other than designer jeans and a high-end brand shirt, let alone something vintage. In the end, he hadn’t been able to join them because he’d been called to the hospital to treat a complication in one of his patients; but Toni suspected that he’d got someone to make that call rather than say straight out that he didn’t want to go.
She expected Ben to be a slightly better dancer than her, but she wasn’t prepared for him to be absolutely brilliant, spinning around and leading her on the floor in a way that made her feel as if she could actually dance instead of being her usual hopeless self.
‘You’re amazing!’ she said when she caught her breath. ‘You’re a dark horse, Ben Mitchell. Where did you learn to dance like that?’
‘Let’s say I had a misspent youth,’ he told her with a grin.
And, now he was relaxed and laughing, he was utterly gorgeous, Toni thought. No wonder he was attracting admiring glances from every woman in the room. He was definitely making her own heart go pitapat. Which was crazy, because she knew he didn’t want to get involved with anyone. But, just for tonight, maybe she could dream.
‘You had dance lessons?’
‘Jessie did,’ he said.
His sister, she remembered.
‘She needed a partner, so I was the obvious choice.’
Because he was her big brother, looking out for her? That didn’t surprise Toni. Ben Mitchell was the sort of man who would’ve asked his little sister’s shy and geeky best friend to the prom so she wasn’t left feeling awkward and alone. Kind. Thoughtful. A huge contrast to Sean—how could she ever have thought Ben reminded her of her ex? It might have seemed that way at first but, the more she got to know him, the more she liked him. ‘So she learned to do the jive and stuff like that?’
‘All the ballroom dances and all the Latin ones,’ he said. ‘Jessie took all her exams and got gold medals.’
‘And so did you?’ she guessed.
‘To support her,’ he said, glossing over the question.
So clearly he’d done well but wasn’t the sort to boast about it.
‘Our teacher really liked big band music and nineteen-forties dances,’ Ben said, ‘so she taught us the jitterbug and the Lindy Hop as well.’
‘The jitterbug? Now that’s way above my pay grade,’ Toni said, laughing.
‘You might be surprised. Let’s give it a go.’
He talked her through some of the steps—and, the next thing she knew, she was actually dancing the jitterbug with him, twirling round and actually going in the direction she was supposed to go instead of the complete opposite. And it made her feel as if she was flying.
Though, if she was honest with herself, it wasn’t just the dance moves that made her feel so good. It was Ben himself.
Which was dangerous. She knew she wasn’t good at relationships, and he was understandably wary. She needed to be sensible.
‘I loved that,’ she said when the song was over. ‘I’ve never been able to dance anywhere near as well as that before.’
‘Who are you and what have you done with my little sister?’ Stacey teased, coming over to them with her arm wrapped round her husband. ‘Toni, I’ve never seen you that co-ordinated before. That was amazing.’
‘I’m not taking any credit for that. It was all him,’ Toni said, gesturing gracefully towards Ben.
‘You could be a professional dancer, Ben,’ Stacey said.
Ben laughed. ‘I’m happy with my current job, but thank you for the compliment.’
‘Very much deserved. Dr Mitchell, please may I have the next dance?’ Stacey asked.
‘Sure.’ He held his hand out to her. ‘Are you two joining us?’
Nick looked at Toni and shook his head. ‘I can’t do what you do, Ben—and I value my toes! You and I are going to queue up at the bar and sort out a round, Toni.’
‘Perfect,’ Toni said, tucking her arm through Nick’s.
‘Can we get you a beer, Ben?’ Nick asked.
‘That’d be great, thanks. I’m not fussy what you get,’ Ben said. ‘And the next round is mine.’
‘I like him. He’s a nice guy,’ Nick said when they were in the queue.
‘Don’t you start,’ Toni warned. ‘Or did Stacey prime you to say that?’
‘Hey. You’re my baby sister-in-law. I worry about you nearly as much as Stacey does,’ Nick
said.
‘I love you, too, big brother-in-law,’ Toni said with a smile. ‘But I’m fine as I am. Really. You don’t have to worry about me.’
In between the odd sip of beer, Ben danced with quite a few of women in the hall—including a virtuoso display with one of the local dance teachers, which had everyone standing around them in a circle, clapping and cheering as they executed amazing spins and turns.
‘That man,’ Stacey said to Toni, ‘is something else.’
Toni knew that tone well. ‘He’s my colleague,’ she reminded her sister.
‘And I’ve seen the way he looks at you. He likes you.’
‘Strictly as a friend,’ Toni said firmly. And she wasn’t going to admit to that wobble in her stomach when he caught her eyes across the dance floor and smiled at her.
‘Give him a chance, Toni.’
Toni hugged her. ‘I love you, and we’ve had this conversation a lot of times. We’re going to agree to disagree, OK? I’m not good at choosing men, and Ben has his own reasons not to want to get involved. We’re friends. End of.’
She signalled to Ben at the end of the dance. ‘Want to come and get some food?’
Between them, they got a selection of sandwiches, scones and a couple of the mini homity pies Toni had made earlier.
‘So what exactly is a homity pie? A kind of quiche?’ Ben asked, looking at the open-topped pies.
‘Sort of. Eggs and onions were scarce in the war, so the filling’s mainly potato and leek with a chopped apple, one egg and a little bit of cheese,’ she said.
‘Making do. Yeah. It took me a while to get my head round the idea of putting grated carrots in scones,’ Ben said.
‘Sugar replacement plus added moisture. Which I guess we still do today; think of carrot cake,’ she said.
‘So where did you get the recipes?’
‘One of the village hall committee has an original wartime recipe book that belonged to her grandmother, so we use that.’ She took a bite of one of his scones. ‘These are wonderful. If you were in the market for a relationship, between your dancing and your cooking I think you’d have a queue of women a mile long wanting to date you.’