In Royal Service to the Queen

by Tessa Arlen

  “I’ll get out there and organize a chicken for more soup.” Her voice was a whisper, a faint echo of her usually robust and cheerful tone.

  “I can do it. You can’t possibly go outside. The wind will cut you in two.”

  “Have you ever killed a chicken?”

  “I’ve seen you do it often enough.”

  She started to laugh, but it turned into a cough, hard and tight. Her shoulders heaved and her face turned red.

  “There’s nothing to it, Ma. I will ‘organize’ the chicken if you’ll peel the vegetables.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I sat by the window and wrote to George. Letter after letter, in the last of the afternoon light.

  Dear George, I begged. Please, forgive me! Ma misunderstood me about South Africa. I crossed out that line; it was not her fault. I am coming to Aberdeen as soon as it thaws. I wrote on: paragraphs of anguish and regret; then, snatching up the paper, I ripped it in two and tossed it on the fire.

  Dear George,

  I am so terribly sorry. I have tried, badly, to manage my job and our new life together . . .

  I scored a heavy line through my words and tossed the page onto the fire.

  Dear George,

  I am snowed in at the cottage with Ma. She is sick and I am frightened. We are cut off from the world. The drifts are so deep, and no one has come to us from the village. Please come.

  The band around my throat tightened as I scrunched the page into a ball and tossed it into the fire, reached for my coat, and went out into the storm to carry in more firewood and feed the chickens.

  When I came back into the kitchen, I found my mother bent double, hacking and gasping for air, her face a deep, congested purple. I put a heavy pan onto the hob to reheat the chicken soup I had made from the old hen I had killed this morning. Was it really today that I had done that? It seemed like a year ago.

  I could still feel the hen’s scrawny neck under my fingers as I had laid it on the chopping block and tried to justify my brutality with the pragmatic excuse that she had long since stopped laying anyway and that this sacrifice was for my mother. I shuddered, remembering the bright splash of blood on the snow. I wiped my hand down the side of my skirt, but the soft, downy neck feathers were imprinted on my fingertips.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  March 1947

  Limekiln Cottage, Dunfermline, Scotland

  The short, dark days, howling wind, the bank of snow that obliterated daylight, and my morning trip along a tunnel of ice to the henhouse took their toll on my morale and my mother’s health.

  Then one morning as I waited for the kettle to boil, I tuned in to the BBC Home Service. “Ma, they have just announced that there is a thaw in the south, and because it warmed up so quickly, there are now floods—everywhere. We should expect our freeze to ease up soon.” I sat down on the edge of my mother’s makeshift bed in the kitchen next to the fire and washed her face and hands in warm water. “Ready for some breakfast? You look better today. You didn’t cough quite so much last night.”

  “Has the Forth flooded?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, but if it does, we are too high up for floodwater to reach us. Don’t worry.”

  Her face was the color of parchment, and there were dark shadows under her eyes. They looked huge in her thin face, but worse than that, they had lost their spark. That indefinable quality that was the essence of my mother’s energy, her drive and her determination—the qualities that had kept this little woman going through the years of my childhood, two world wars, and an economic depression—were now faded as they gazed blankly into my face.

  I propped her upright against a wall of pillows and pulled her shawl up close around her neck and shoulders. Then I carefully put a cup of tea into her hands, wrapping them around the cup before I let go. She took a sip. “Great heavens above, there is sugar in this tea. Did Johnny Mackenzie get his tractor through?” Her voice was as dry and scratchy as the branches of the mulberry tree that had scraped against the kitchen window in the wind, a creature desperate to come in out of the cold.

  “Yesterday afternoon. You were sleeping. He brought bacon, bread and butter, and a pot of Mrs. Mackenzie’s marmalade, Ma. I’m going to make you breakfast—it will be a feast.” He had also promised me that he would bring the doctor for my mother.

  “Bacon—whatever next? And what is that you have in your hand?”

  I held out an envelope with what I hoped was a steady hand. “A letter for you. John Mackenzie brought it—he says it came this morning.”

  She squinted up at it. “That’s George’s writing, you had better open it.”

  I took a breath to steady the tremor in my fingers and tore open the envelope. The letter was postmarked the fifteenth of February—the day after I had arrived here nearly three weeks ago. The day before the worst blizzard in history hit Great Britain and most of Northern Europe.

  I pulled out a single sheet.

  Dear Mrs. Crawford,

  I was hoping to drive out to you on Sunday, but the roads are either blocked with snow or covered in ice—with more on the way—so I might have to postpone my visit for a week. I imagine your plight is worse than ours here in Aberdeen, since you are so isolated—even from Dunfermline.

  My greatest concern is that with Marion away, you will not be able to get to the shops for supplies before the next storm, so I have telephoned Mr. Anderson to put a box together of basic things like bread and milk, and he says as soon as the roads to your house are clear, he will deliver them.

  I hope you have enough firewood to see you through the storm, and hopefully I will be able to get down to you next week.

  I don’t want to labor the point but having a telephone installed in your cottage might be a good idea!

  Yours,

  George

  The news, so welcome that it restored more energy to her tired body than a cup of tea, roused my mother to harrumph at the idea of the telephone in her house. “First thing that happens in a good, strong storm: the lines come down . . . Why anyone would want . . .” She was about to start in on “the” electricity, but it turned into a coughing fit.

  “He thinks you are in Africa,” she said, and took another mouthful.

  I turned away, overcome by a dozen conflicting thoughts. I couldn’t let her see my unease. She had been so sick in the last week that I believed I might lose her. What she needed most was the hope that George had not deserted me. That when she went, I would not be alone. My mother understood how hard it was to live on your own. “Drink your tea, Ma. I’m going to make us a disgustingly hearty English breakfast—no porridge oats for us today.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The next morning, I was trundling a wheelbarrow of fresh straw from the old barn to the chicken coop when Dr. Marley arrived.

  “There’s flooding along the banks of the Forth,” he said by way of greeting. “Good thing you are up this high. How on earth you and your mother survived that freeze I’ll never know.”

  I wanted to say that she survived only by the slenderest of threads and because she was one of the toughest women I knew, but he was in no mood for chitchat. I led him into the house to where she was sitting by the Aga, bundled up in her old Shetland wool cardigan and a thick plaid shawl around her shoulders.

  “I knew you would outlast that wicked weather, Mrs. Crawford,” he said as he took out his stethoscope to listen to her heart. “Now, a little cough.” He nodded as he listened. “Heart as strong as a horse, but your lungs sound a bit too thick for my liking.” He sat down next to her and took her pulse and put a thermometer under her tongue.

  “Just a bit of a cold,” Ma said.

  “Don’t talk, please. Aye, it might very well have started as a cold; then it went to your lungs; now you have the pneumonia
with a fever.” He rummaged in his bag and fumbled with a large bottle of pills and a cardboard container with fingers still clumsy with cold. He turned to me. “I can’t do this without going to the window, Marion. Count out twenty-eight of these pills into this container.” He turned back to my mother. “I am leaving penicillin with you, Mrs. Crawford. You are to take two tablets a day for the next fourteen days: one in the morning with your breakfast, the other with your supper. Finish all of them, even if you are feeling better. You should be full of beans in a few days’ time, but you are to continue to rest. And for heaven’s sake would you please eat something? You are as thin as a switch—not a good idea, at your age, to begin dieting.” His feeble attempt at a joke made my mother smile. “I’m going into the grocer at Dunfermline with a list from your daughter, and they will deliver everything to you this afternoon. I want you to eat lots of nourishing chicken soup, until your stomach can cope with meat.” He only looked a little offended as we both laughed off chicken soup. “If I ever eat chicken again,” my mother said as she held her handkerchief to her eyes, “it will not be too soon.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “Will you keep each other company?” I asked my mother’s friend Betty, our nearest neighbor, who had come to visit. “I have to go and clean out the coop. It stinks to high heaven.”

  Betty nodded. “Better you than me.” She sat back in her chair and stretched her feet to the fire. “I could smell it as I came through the wood. What a pong!”

  I raked out the coop, piling slimy-wet straw, thick with manure, into the wooden wheelbarrow. On the far horizon, huge ink blue clouds loomed, and I worked faster. If more snow was on the way, I couldn’t possibly think of leaving Ma, even with Betty to look after her, for the three days of my planned visit to Aberdeen to see George. I raked wet straw in a fury, anxious to be out of the wind. My eyes watered not only from its northern bite but from the acrid stink of old chicken bedding. I braced myself on the slushy ground and stood upright for a moment to ease my back. The world looked desolate: the meadow grass yellow-brown and sodden with pond water; the looming slate gray skies and the howling wind promised only more winter, more snow, and a return to isolation.

  The old argument started again in my head: Stop making excuses. You have to go to Aberdeen.

  I will, as soon as I can leave Ma.

  She will be fine with Betty staying here: you have to go now. You have to go and see him before it’s too late, before not seeing him becomes normal.

  I resumed raking: lifting and dumping the filthy straw into the back of the barrow. I saw George standing in the doorway of his landlady’s house, his expression as cold and unforgiving as the weather. I closed my eyes and shook my head as I heard my meek, stuttered words of apology. It was an image that came into my head every day. On good days George reached out and pulled me into his arms, stroking my hair as he held me tightly. On bleak ones I turned away from his silent frown to trudge back down the pathway to the street, alone.

  My God, Marion, anyone would think you were Margaret with all this drama. Go tomorrow morning, catch the ten o’clock train—Betty will stay with Ma!

  Resolve made me stronger, and I picked up the thick wooden handles of the laden wheelbarrow with renewed vigor and hefted it forward. My wet wool gloves slipped on the handles, worn smooth with use. I tightened my grasp to steer my load through the gate of the chicken run. The heavy barrow tilted, and I struggled to keep it upright, ramming my leg against the post of the gate.

  I hauled in a breath, set my teeth, and shoved my load up the slope to the compost heap outside the barn. The soles of my boots slid in the slick mud. “Come on, will you?” I could have sworn the barrow leaned its weight against me in response. I should never have loaded it so high. I braced against the heavy barrow and its reeking pile of straw, throwing my weight forward. For a precarious moment, I felt my feet slip in the mud and then hold. I growled under my breath and pushed again with all my might.

  We must have looked like something out of a Charlie Chaplin film, the wheelbarrow and me. My legs began to slide away, and however frantically my feet tried to keep up in the wet mud, they lost the battle. The joints of my wrists burned as the barrow twisted out of my desperate grasp, and I came down with an almighty thump on my back. For a moment the barrow teetered as if it was trying to decide whether to flip to the right or roll back on top of me. It made up its mind with a cumbersome cartwheel to come crashing down on its side an inch from my head. As a final contemptuous coup de grâce, it rained its stinking load down on me.

  “God damn it all!” I shrieked—profanity learned from my employer. “God damn it all to . . . to . . . to buggery!” I lay on my back in freezing slush covered in a blanket of chicken filth.

  The weeks of the blizzard, the bleak cold, the long hours of slog just to stay warm, clean, and fed; the exhausting worry of Ma’s illness; and the heartache and fear of losing George rushed in on me in a tidal wave of furious anger and outrage. I lifted my head clear of the acrid stench of muck and half-decomposed straw and rolled onto my stomach, tears of rage choked in my throat as I tried to wipe the filth out of my eyes. When I could draw breath, I lifted my head for another round of profanity. “I swear to . . . God!”

  “Marion? Is that you?” I turned my blinded eyes toward a voice I had yearned to hear in all the dark days of the storm. It was George. Tears welled and tried to break through the mask of mud.

  “Marion, what on earth are you doing here?” Two hands clasped me under my arms and lifted me to my feet. I was so covered in sludge I couldn’t see him through the mat of mud-filled hair that hung in a curtain across my eyes.

  “Be still, you’re covered in . . . in chicken shit.” It was George’s voice. It was George! “Let’s get you up to the house.” We began to move forward as I was half-dragged, half-carried up the slope toward the kitchen door.

  My mother’s voice. “Dear heavens above, Marion! What happened? George? What on earth is going on?”

  “I’ll tell you what happened. Poor bairn went down in the muck, didn’t you, Marion?” Betty’s strong arm joined George’s around my waist.

  “I found her outside. Good Lord above, Marion, are you all right?” Careful hands felt my arms and pushed back the layers of wool. “No bones broken, but that’s a nasty bruise on your arm.” I was put into Ma’s chair. My bedraggled hair was pushed back out of my eyes. A warm, wet towel made a track through some of the filth on my face; cornstalks were pulled out of my hair.

  “How did it happen?” Betty was trying to untie the laces of my slimy boots. “Oof, but that’s a strong smell. Put newspaper down there on the floor, George, that’s the way.”

  I started to shake my head, tears coursing tracks down my grimy face. “The wheelbarrow . . . too heavy . . . I slipped . . .”

  “She’s exhausted,” said Ma. “It has been a long and terrible go of it. Poor girl. It’s all right, Marion; George is here now. You just rest while we get you cleaned up and out of these sopping clothes.”

  I couldn’t bear to look at him.

  His hands were on the front of my coat as he unbuttoned and pulled it from my shoulders. “I’ll take care of her, Mrs. Crawford. You look all in too. Sit down, please—next to the fire. Betty, would you make something hot for her to drink? Cocoa, or tea with sugar, if you have it.”

  He took off my wet coat, brought more hot water, and washed the dirt from my face and neck.

  “Stand up, Marion, lean on George.” Betty wrapped me in a warm blanket and somehow peeled off my skirt and stockings from underneath it. All the while Ma told George the tale of how long we had been cut off.

  “Even I had a job to get through to them ’til two days ago.” Betty put a cup in my hands. “We were all fine out here, until Mackenzie’s tractor broke down a fortnight back. Take a wee sippa this, Marion, it’s ma ain hot beef broth.”

  I drank a
s Ma’s voice picked up the tale. “More like a month it felt like, Betty. I lost track of time. The pump froze—we had to melt snow. Marion had to keep bringing in logs . . . from the woodshed . . . a tree came down in the gale, fell like the crack of doom, just missed the cottage . . . we had to rescue the chickens . . . thank the Lord the winter stores lasted. The days were so short, the night seemed to go on forever. We ran out of candles, barely a pint left of lamp oil.”

  “Marion, let me help you up the stairs so you can put on clean clothes.” Strong arms lifted me again.

  “I can take her, George, I can take her.” Betty was at my side.

  “No, I’ll manage. It was only a tumble.” I was desperate to clean myself in the privacy of our bitterly cold bathroom.

  “You look so pale . . . my love.” I still couldn’t look at him.

  “I’ll be fine . . . after a bath.”

  “Marion”—my mother used her commanding voice—“sit down by the fire and let Betty clean up your hair. George, you have to carry up hot water for her bath. Heat it on the Aga.”

  George filled up our bath kettles and put them on the hob. Then he sat down on the floor next to me. “What are you doing here? I thought you had gone to South Africa!”

  “She arrived the day before the storm,” Ma said for me. “Thank God she didn’t go to Africa. I would not have made it through alone.”

  * * *

  • • •

  The next day George and I left my mother in Betty’s capable hands with a pantry stocked with food and drove back to Aberdeen. I had instructions from Ma to reassure her sisters all was well and a list of provisions to buy that could not be had in Dunfermline’s sorely depleted shops.

  When my aunts left to make their traditional visit to do the flowers in their church, George and I climbed the narrow attic stairs to the top of the house and the room that had become mine in 1918 at the end of the war when my father had died.