by Jenny Holmes
‘I’m glad life isn’t such a battle for you any more.’
Alma risked a smile. ‘That’s exactly how it felt when I was growing up. Every day was a fight to survive, partly because of what had happened in the fire but it was because of Aunty Muriel too. She wanted me to do as I was told but I couldn’t always; not if I thought she was in the wrong.’
‘Good for you.’ Convinced that this was the first time Alma had talked about this, Joyce said little but listened attentively.
‘She did her best, but … She owns a milliner’s shop on Kitchener Street in Northgate. Aunty Muriel minds about how people look; that’s just the way she is. But she took me on after …’
In the pause that followed Joyce remembered her own life as a child, growing up with her mother, father and sister in their farm close to Stratford-upon-Avon, surrounded by love and the wondrous cycle of the seasons; how it had all been snatched away by her mother’s death and her father’s heavy drinking. Her sister had left home and the farm had failed. All that remained of that happy time were her precious memories.
‘Aunty Muriel didn’t believe the fire was an accident, even though the police decided there was no foul play,’ Alma went on. ‘She wanted someone to feel angry with and there was no one except me because I was the only one left alive. There was a little workroom at the back of the shop, with a curtain across so she could hear the bell ring when a customer came in. She made a strict rule: I was to stay behind the curtain while she talked about bows and feathers, silk flowers, ribbons and silver buckles in case I put people off by the way I looked.’
‘Did she use those words?’
‘Oh yes, many a time. There were hat-blocks made of wood sitting on the shelf behind me, big pairs of scissors on the bench. I knew off by heart every type of decoration you can put on a hat. I can still hear Aunty Muriel’s voice going on and on about what was the very latest fashion.’
The door of the dairy room was open and a shaft of early-morning sunlight fell across the flags. Laurence had been standing in the doorway for a while before Joyce and Alma noticed his long shadow. Their conversation broke off and Alma’s expression shut down as if at the flick of a switch.
‘Get on with your work,’ Laurence told Joyce, who nodded and went next door to hose down the milking shed.
‘It wasn’t her fault, it was mine,’ Alma told him.
He rested one hand on the doorpost, blocking the light so that he was in silhouette against a sparkling snow-covered backdrop and the expression on his sharp-featured face was impossible to make out. He’d heard voices in the dairy and jumped to the conclusion that the two women were gossiping about him behind his back.
‘It was me who held Joyce back from her work,’ Alma insisted with a hint of stubborn defiance.
‘So I gathered.’
She rinsed her hands under the tap then dried them on her apron. Then she took a mop and bucket and started to swab down the floor. Laurence stayed in the doorway observing her. ‘If you want to blame anyone, blame me.’
He went on watching then spoke at last. ‘Bernard Huby has half a dozen spare eggs he says we can have. Tomorrow’s baking day. Why not borrow Joyce’s bike and ride over to Garthside to fetch them?’
Evelyn worked alone in the stable yard at Acklam. She’d woken late to find the space in the bed next to her already empty and Cliff nowhere to be seen. She’d pulled on her clothes and gone downstairs.
‘Here, lazybones; drink this,’ he’d said, handing her a cup of tea. His gun lay on the table, taken apart ready for cleaning. His boots stood in the hearth next to a newly built fire.
It had been the first time they’d spent the whole night together, after Cliff had convinced her that there was no chance of old man Weatherall waking up and catching them. ‘Anyway, what if he did? He’d have forgotten it ever happened by this time tomorrow.’
So Evelyn had stayed in the warmth of Cliff’s bed and they’d slept on their sides, his body curled against hers, his arm resting over her stomach, his breath on the back of her neck.
She would remember for ever the wondrous strangeness of waking up in his room, the warm indent of his body in the mattress, of his head on the pillow; a foretaste, she hoped, of their future life together. There would come a day when she took such a thing for granted, but this first morning when light had crept in to the eastern sky and she’d heard his footsteps in the kitchen below, she’d treasured every moment.
Soon enough the tea had been drunk and toast eaten.
‘I’d best nip over and check on the old man,’ he’d told her. He’d been gone less than five minutes before returning for his car keys. ‘He’s no better – worse, if anything. He keeps on trying to get out of bed. I think we need the doc sooner rather than later.’
And before Evelyn had had a chance to comment, a worried Cliff had set off for Shawcross. ‘Check in on him every now and then,’ he’d told her as he’d driven out of the yard.
This kept Evelyn tied to jobs close to home. She began by tethering Captain to an iron ring by his stable door then mucking out and laying a fresh bed of straw. Then she filled a hay-net and left the horse tethered as she went into the big house, climbed the stairs and knocked on Weatherall’s door. There was no answer so she knocked again. This time she heard a volley of curses followed by a fit of violent coughing. Gingerly she opened the door.
‘Who’s there?’ The old man sat propped up by pillows with, of all things, a rusty old sabre laid across his chest. He tried to seize it by the handle and swipe it towards Evelyn but he didn’t have the strength to lift it. His pyjama top was unbuttoned, revealing yellow, wrinkled skin. Veins bulged in his forehead and incoherent threats emerged from the cavern of his toothless mouth. ‘Damn it, I’ll have you court-martialled if you come any nearer, whoever you are. I’ll have you shot at dawn!’
‘It’s me, Evelyn.’ At this rate he’d fall out of bed and knock himself out and she didn’t want to have to answer for that. ‘Evelyn Newbold, your forester.’
He tried again with the sabre and failed a second time. ‘Don’t come any closer; I’m warning you!’
Poor old beggar. Pity overtook her sense of the ridiculous as she approached the bed. ‘Is there anything you need, Colonel Weatherall? Can I bring you a glass of water?’
‘Who is it you say you are?’ He peered at her through almost sightless eyes. ‘Are you Winifred? No, that damned sister of mine hasn’t been near me for years. You’re not her.’
‘I’m Evelyn,’ she repeated. God, he looked to be at death’s door; the flesh on his face and neck was shrunken away, the skin papery, his hands like claws. She noticed that the glass at his bedside was empty and steeled herself to reach over and refill it from the ewer close by.
Insults poured from his mouth: old army words mixed with biblical oaths. He waved his fists at her as she lifted the glass, picking up the smell of a strong spirit, most likely rum, as she filled it with water. Avoiding his flailing fists, she offered him the glass. The rim touched his lips and instinct told him to swallow.
‘That’s better,’ she said quietly.
His eyes rolled towards her.
‘Another?’
He drank again then sank his head back against the pillow.
‘There now, let me take this away from you.’ She lifted the old sword and put it out of reach. ‘We don’t want you to hurt yourself.’
He closed his eyes, flicked them open then closed them again.
‘Cliff’s gone for the doctor.’ Evelyn wasn’t sure whether or not he could hear her. ‘The snow’s eased off so Dr Brownlee should be able to get through today.’
There was no response but the old man was breathing normally, which must mean that he was asleep. She would come back in an hour, she decided.
Then she went downstairs out into the yard, running a hand down Captain’s smooth, warm neck and giving him a fond pat before leading him back into his stable. ‘I’ve made a nice clean bed for you,’ she murmured.
Call me old fashioned, but give me a horse over a tractor any day, she thought as she got to work with her axe, standing each log upright on the chopping block and bringing the blade down with a swift action that split the log clean down the middle. Place in position, strike and cleave; the repetitive routine had the effect of soothing her after her upsetting encounter with the sick old man. She smelt the resin of the pine logs and watched the firewood tumble to the ground. When she judged that she had chopped enough, she filled a barrow and wheeled it into the lean-to log store close to the house.
When she came out again, she saw an unfamiliar Humber Hillman car at the gate and strode across. There was a portly man in a trilby hat in the driving seat. His passenger was a youngish woman dressed in a nurse’s cap and cape.
‘Dr Brownlee?’ she enquired.
The man nodded and asked her to open the gate, which she did. He drove slowly into the yard. ‘That lane gets worse,’ he complained. ‘It’s full of potholes. The snow and ice doesn’t help either.’
‘Did Cliff telephone you just now?’ Evelyn was surprised that the doctor had got here so quickly.
Dr Brownlee buttoned up his overcoat. He took a brown portmanteau from the back seat of his car. ‘Not this morning; why?’
The woman stepped out and quickly shook Evelyn’s hand. She was neat from head to foot in starched collar, apron and cuffs, with clipped, clean fingernails and short brown hair held in place by a net. ‘I’m Gillian Vernon. Samuel Weatherall is my uncle.’
‘Good heavens!’ Evelyn couldn’t hide her surprise.
‘You weren’t expecting me, I know. I work at St Luke’s Hospital in Millwood. Dr Brownlee is under strict instructions from my mother to telephone me in the event of my uncle falling ill.’
‘The family is entitled to be kept informed in a situation such as this.’ The doctor offered Evelyn a rapid justification as they entered the house. ‘I mean, when the patient is not of sound mind.’
‘I received the call last night.’ Gillian Vernon followed Brownlee up the stairs. ‘I promised Mother I’d see to things. How is my uncle this morning?’
‘He’s sleeping at the moment.’ Well aware that this turn of events wasn’t what Cliff had hoped for, Evelyn nevertheless was impressed by the niece’s no-nonsense manner. ‘Cliff and I have kept an eye on him like you said, Doctor. The trouble is, the moment he wakes up, he tries to get out of bed. I don’t think he knows where he is.’
By this time they’d entered the sick man’s room and one quick listen with his stethoscope told Brownlee that they needed to move quickly. ‘Do you hear that, Samuel?’ He spoke loudly and plainly. ‘You’re a sick man. We need to get you to hospital.’
‘Hospital, be damned! You’re a quack, Brownlee. May you rot in hell!’
‘He knows me, at least,’ the doctor muttered to Gillian as he felt Weatherall’s pulse. ‘But he’s in a bad way.’
‘Uncle Samuel, listen to me.’ She took his ancient, mottled hand and squeezed it with a professional mixture of compassion and briskness.
‘Winifred?’ the colonel wheezed, turning his head towards her.
‘No, Mother is at home. She asked me to come. I’m your niece, Gillian. Do you remember me?’
He snatched away his claw-like hand. ‘Clear off, leave me alone! Who’s that?’ he screeched, pointing at Evelyn. ‘Is that Winifred?’
‘Hmm.’ Brownlee decided to take charge. ‘The difficulty lies in persuading him to come with us. Can he walk or will we have to carry him?’ he asked Evelyn.
‘Carry,’ she replied.
‘Wait, let me see what I can do.’ Buttoning up her uncle’s pyjama jacket, Gillian searched for slippers under his bed. ‘Come along now; let’s get you out of bed into a nice warm dressing-gown. We can bring the car right up to the front door. Do you hear me? We’re going to look after you.’
‘Winifred?’ he asked again, his chest heaving as he struggled for breath.
Gillian cast a resigned look at the doctor. ‘Yes, that’s right. Now Dr Brownlee is here too; you remember him? He wants to take you to hospital. Are you strong enough to stand up and walk?’
‘Walk? Walk? Of course I can walk!’ He tried to swing his legs over the edge of the bed but collapsed forward in a bout of fresh wheezing and swearing.
‘What if we sit him in the cane chair and carry him down in that?’ Evelyn pointed out the chair by the window.
The others nodded. ‘Do it quickly,’ Dr Brownlee told them. ‘With luck we can get him in the car before he has time to realize what’s happening.’
‘Ready?’ Gillian and Evelyn managed to transfer the patient from bed to chair then carry him along the landing and down the stairs. Brownlee hurried on ahead in order to back his car up to the front door.
‘Poor Uncle Samuel, you’re skin and bone,’ Gillian murmured as she cast a last, lingering look around a house that she’d played in happily as a child, in the days when her uncle and mother had got on well and she’d stayed here during school holidays, building dens in the woods and scaling the crumbling castle walls. She’d never known what had happened to make the grown-ups argue; only that the visits had stopped abruptly and her uncle had become more and more of a recluse. Her mother had refused to explain the rift. It wasn’t talked about; frankness was not the family way.
Dr Brownlee held open the car door while Evelyn and Gillian carried Samuel Weatherall out of the house for what everyone knew could be the final time.
‘Hold on a second; where are you taking him?’ Cliff had driven up unnoticed and jumped out of his Morris at the moment that Evelyn and Gillian brought the old man out into the yard. He left Weatherall’s spaniel whining in the car and strode towards them.
Brownlee looked irritated by the interruption. ‘Stand back, Cliff. Samuel needs to go straight to hospital.’
At first he stood his ground. ‘And who’s she?’ He pointed at Gillian.
Evelyn intervened. ‘Cliff, this is Colonel Weatherall’s niece.’
The old man made out Cliff’s outline and waved an imaginary sword at him. ‘Take that!’ He was back again in his sabre-wielding cavalry days, leading men and their mounts to their deaths in the Transvaal. He heard the rattle of gunfire, saw his soldiers fall.
‘Quickly, Cliff; we need to get him on to the back seat of the doctor’s car,’ Evelyn said.
Cliff grunted then stepped to one side to let the two women complete their task. Then, before they could drive away, he ran to his car and picked up the dog. He carried it back and thrust it at Gillian. ‘Here – take this with you.’
The spaniel wriggled and whined in her arms. ‘What’s its name?’
‘It doesn’t have one, as far as I know. Anyway, it’s not part of my job to look after it.’
The niece turned to Brownlee for advice.
‘Bring it,’ he said. ‘I’ll find it a good home if need be.’
Gillian put the spaniel into the car then shook Evelyn’s hand and thanked her before sliding on to the back seat beside her uncle.
‘Well done; you were right to telephone me and I’m sorry I couldn’t get here yesterday.’ Brownlee failed to register the exasperation on Cliff’s face. ‘Now move your car out of my way and let me out through the gate – there’s a good chap.’
Dorothy always enjoyed her visits to Geoff Dawson at New Hall and today, two days before the big event, was no exception. She’d turned up at the house uninvited, armed with a list of refreshments for Saturday. Geoff was about to set off for Northgate to attend an evening lecture given by a man from the Ministry of Information on grants available to farmers: useful knowledge that he could then pass on to his neighbours during his veterinary rounds. There was sixty-four pounds per year up for grabs – a sum not to be sniffed at.
‘Guess who!’ she trilled as
he came to the door. ‘It’s me, Dorothy! Put the kettle on, Geoff. I want to talk to you about Saturday night.’
He stood in his coat and hat, car keys in hand. ‘Does it have to be right now?’
‘Yes; there’s still such a lot to organize.’ She bustled past him and made her way to the kitchen where she sat down at the table and unfolded her list. ‘Emma is happy to make two plates of sandwiches – one fish paste and one cheese and pickle, but I still haven’t found anyone to do scones and biscuits or sausage rolls and pork pies.’
‘And you’d like to enlist me as chief scone maker?’ With a sigh of resignation Geoff took off his hat and sat down. The Ministry of Information was no match for Dorothy Huby on a mission so the drive to Northgate might have to be postponed.
‘Oh no, you’re much too busy; I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do that.’ She settled into her spacious surroundings, so different from the cramped, dark kitchen at Garthside. The New Hall set-up had lovely glass-fronted cabinets containing fine china and a grandfather clock ticking away in the background. She especially liked the crimson, jade-green and cream Turkish rug on the polished wooden floor and the two big ornaments on the mantelpiece: white cockatoos with curved beaks and chrome-yellow crests that were so lifelike she swore they would flap their wings and fly off if you went too near.
‘So if it’s not scones you want from me, can I provide the biscuits?’
‘Yes, please.’ Taking a pencil out of her handbag, she licked the lead and ticked them off her list. ‘Not home-made, of course. I’m not expecting that. They can be rich tea or ginger nuts; whatever you can spare.’
‘Consider it done,’ he said with a smile.
‘What about Mr Rigg?’ she wondered, chewing delicately at the blunt end of her pencil. ‘Should I ask him to make a contribution?’
‘Yes, why not?’
‘Yes; after all, we are using his church hall. He is the vicar.’ She thought, as she always did, how nice it would be to live in a place like New Hall; to have Emma Waterhouse coming in to do the cleaning a couple of times a week, to have green lawns and an orchard to look out on in the summer months. Lady of the manor. ‘And who else? Can you think of anyone?’