by Angela Arney
They set off for the church in silence. Violet had difficulty in controlling the car; it constantly threatened to slew sideways on the icy surface. When they reached the end of the lane and joined the main road to the village they both heaved a sigh of relief. The church was in sight. ‘Well done, we made it,’ said Arthur.
Violet turned her head and smiled. ‘About that letter,’ she said, but left the sentence unfinished as at that moment a green sports car came round the bend by the church. It was being driven much too fast and the driver lost control. The car slid sideways towards them.
To Marcus standing in the doorway of the church it all seemed to happen in slow motion. The sports car slid with unerring instinct, and screaming tyres, towards the small saloon driven by Violet, and hit it with an almighty impact. The passenger in the sports car somersaulted out and over the saloon, which was crumpling as if a giant’s hand had suddenly grasped it.
There was an eerie silence broken only by the sound of hissing steam. Marcus could see the doors to Violet’s car were open; Arthur and Violet were lying seemingly lifeless in their seats, trapped by the crumpled bonnet, their belongings scattered in the road. As he reached the car oil started to ooze everywhere, covering everything. Fire! The thought panicked him. He had to get help. He had to get a doctor. He had to get to a phone. If only he were younger. He was out of breath, his legs would hardly function as he half-scrambled, half-slid on the ice towards the nearest house. He fell, slipped into the ditch at the side, then mercifully heard voices. Someone was coming.
‘Arthur, Violet,’ he gasped, flailing his arms towards the mangled wreckage in the road. ‘Help them, please.’
March 1946
Megan could hardly believe it was Peter’s first birthday. This time last year had been so different. She’d been happy; Henry loved the baby and had been happy too. He still loved Peter and Rosie, but now, most of the time, he was sunk in depression. Nothing could help him, not even when the final adoption papers came for Rosie.
At Christmas, Arthur and Violet’s accident had briefly taken Megan’s mind off Henry’s growing depression. Frantic with worry, she’d rushed to the hospital; but luckily neither of them had been seriously injured. Arthur had a broken arm and Violet a broken leg. Once they’d recovered consciousness and been bandaged and plastered, they’d been allowed back to Folly House. But Christmas and New Year passed by Folly House unnoticed because Marcus was dead.
He had died that cold Christmas Eve morning in a frozen ditch. No one had noticed at first because they were busy with the accident victims, but when he didn’t move, they realized he was dead. The driver of the sports car was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident too. He was a friend of Adam’s who’d been down visiting him at the Priory Hospital.
Adam, thought Megan bitterly. Anything to do with him was poison. It was irrational, she knew, but she still thought it. Henry made no comment.
Marcus’s death left a huge void in Megan’s life. She missed him more than she’d ever thought she would. He’d always been there, an old man getting increasingly set in his ways, annoying sometimes, but there, always there; a continuous thread in her life. Now that thread was broken and Megan suddenly became aware of her own mortality.
It didn’t help that Rosie was bereft with grief. ‘For the first time I had a real granddad,’ she wept. ‘Now he’s gone.’
Megan couldn’t comfort her, but Mrs Fox, who’d returned to Folly House like an avenging angel when she’d heard news of Marcus’s death, did. ‘Just because you can’t see him any more,’ she told Rosie sternly, ‘doesn’t mean that he’s not here. He was always preaching about eternal life from that pulpit of his, and now he’s got it. Eternal life. You can go and talk to him at his grave in the churchyard. He’ll hear you.’
‘But he won’t reply,’ wailed Rosie.
‘He will. Although it may not be in the way you expect.’
Rosie started stopping off at the grave on the way home from school. ‘Most unhealthy,’ muttered Bertha, who didn’t approve at all. As far as she was concerned once you were dead, you were dead, no bones about it.
But if it helped Rosie Megan was glad. She had other things to concern her. She wished Mrs Fox could stay for ever at Folly House, but she couldn’t afford to pay her, so she went back to Southampton to work in Woolworths. Nowadays she was glad when Henry stayed over at Brinkley Hall; it was a relief from his increasingly depressing aura. She felt guilty about him but didn’t know what to do, and anyway she hardly had time to think about it these days. Money was tighter than ever. No matter how hard they all worked it was difficult to pay the wages of the farmhands and the Jones family. Megan did more than her share of work these days, as George was showing signs of his age and had recently become riddled with arthritis. Her hands grew rough and calloused and sometimes she could hardly put one foot in front of the other.
‘We’ll have to pension off the Jones family,’ said Lavinia one evening after supper. ‘Get in some younger people.’
‘We can’t do that.’ Megan felt irritable. Lately Lavinia seemed to have no real concept of the world outside Folly House. Now the war was over she thought everything should return to how it had been before the war. The fact that they had hardly any money, and inflation made the cost of everything higher, just didn’t register with her.
‘It’s time for you to take over properly as lady of Folly House,’ she said, warming to her theme one evening. ‘We could start giving dinner parties for the county set. You’ve never really mingled with them properly because war was declared so soon after you married Henry.’
‘We can’t afford it, Lavinia,’ said Megan. ‘I’m a working woman and have no time for socializing. Besides, although the war has ended food rationing is now stricter than ever, and according to the government is going to get worse. Even bread is rationed now. The country is bankrupt, the taxes are killing us, and we’re in for years of austerity.’
But Lavinia didn’t want to hear this. ‘I’ve got money,’ she insisted. ‘There’s no need for you to worry.’
She couldn’t understand that the inheritance from her husband had dwindled into insignificance due to inflation since the war. She was no longer a wealthy widow. Eventually Megan persuaded her to let Mr Green, the accountant, take over managing her financial affairs, and he confided to Henry and Megan that he thought she was becoming a little muddled in her old age.
For Megan, Lavinia’s increasing forgetfulness was one more thing to worry about. If she had not had Peter and Rosie to cherish she sometimes thought she could just walk away from Folly House and everyone in it. Those were the bad days; most of the time she gritted her teeth and got on with it. But even on the good days, there was always the aching, nagging loneliness in her heart. Were there other women like her? Sometimes she felt that perhaps God was punishing her for wanting too much, and trying to grasp it. But other times she felt sorrier for Henry than herself. His memory had completely returned now, and with it came recurring nightmares about Dunkirk. Only once did he confess to her the searing images which filled his sleeping mind. But Megan always knew when it happened. He would awaken, shouting out, covering his face with his hands, sweating profusely and groaning. Afterwards he would lie for hours shivering violently, while Megan lay beside him, unable to help, unable to sleep and constantly worrying about the future.
But sometimes, with Peter in her arms, she knew she was luckier than most. They lived in comfort, unlike many people, crammed together in makeshift accommodation while they waited for their bombed homes to be repaired. And even then, they were not bricks-and-mortar houses, but prefabricated bungalows with tiny rooms, and even tinier gardens. Folly House still had space inside and out. The months went past, Peter reached his second birthday, and Bertha made a birthday cake with black-market flour. No one felt guilty about such small breaches of the law of the land.
Then one evening, when the family had gathered in the gold room after dinner, Violet produced a whole bottle o
f port, and a pound of mature stilton cheese.
‘A whole pound of cheese,’ exclaimed Megan in amazement. ‘But we’re only allowed two ounces a week.’
‘Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies,’ said Violet with a grin, and then produced some water biscuits made from white flour. They looked delicious, with creamy white middles and crispy brown edges.
‘The last time I saw something like this it was 1939,’ said Lavinia. ‘What are we celebrating?’
‘Violet and I are going to be married,’ said Arthur, beaming from ear to ear.
The room erupted, and Megan hugged Violet. ‘I never thought I’d want to marry again, but I hadn’t bargained on falling in love with such a lovely man as Arthur,’ said Violet. ‘We’ve made lots of plans; Brinkley Hall is going to remain as a hospital, and Arthur and I will have the west wing as private accommodation when we have a family, but before that we shall move to London for a while.’
‘Move to London,’ echoed Megan. It seemed that more of her world was disappearing. Her father had gone, now she was losing Arthur and Violet as well.
‘You’ll still see us,’ Violet looked seriously at Megan, ‘but I know you’ll not want to deny Arthur the thing he’s always been dreaming of, a place to study at the Royal Academy of Music. He’s had an audition and passed and starts next term.’
Megan tried to be glad, as they raised their glasses and toasted the future of the happy pair. But deep in her heart she was jealous. They were about to embark on a normal married life, with the prospect of children. Whereas no matter how much she longed for another child, it would never happen.
Henry didn’t say much apart from adding his congratulations, and Megan wondered what he was thinking. It was impossible to guess. She faced the forthcoming wedding with something approaching despair; with Violet in London there would be no one to talk to.
As for Lavinia she immediately began thinking about clothes. ‘Let’s see,’ she mused. ‘I’ve got a whole year of twenty-four coupons. That’s enough for a dress and shoes, and maybe a hat if I’m lucky. But not enough for a coat: that’s eighteen coupons and I haven’t any left over from last year.’
‘We’re not having a church wedding,’ said Violet firmly. ‘It will be at the Register Office in Stibbington, so you won’t need any fancy clothes.’
Lavinia was disappointed but Megan was relieved. Juggling the clothing coupons to keep up with Rosie and Peter’s growing needs was bad enough, without having to think of wedding clothes.
Violet and Arthur were married on a cold, windy April day, more like January than April. Dottie had spent hours in the churchyard picking wild violets so all the guests had violet buttonholes, and the Register Office was decorated with bunches of wild daffodils. Violet wore a restyled lemon suit, so no coupons were needed. Arthur had needed their combined coupons as he’d splashed out on a new suit. Afterwards there was a wedding breakfast at Folly House, overseen by Bertha, who was in her element as usual.
Their new home was a rented house in Cadogan Square, where Arthur had a music room to himself. The couple soon began to enjoy the vibrant post-war London life of theatres, and concerts. Sometimes Arthur thought of the letter from Jim which had been destroyed in the accident, and wondered whether they ought to mention it to Megan. But Violet said, ‘No, let sleeping dogs lie,’ and that Jim would write again if it was important.
The summer months of the first year of peace passed. Megan employed Dottie officially as a housemaid and started paying her a small wage.
Dottie was ecstatic. ‘I’m going to get real money,’ she squealed.
‘Yes, but it comes to me,’ said Bertha. ‘You’ve got no sense.’
Megan had other plans. ‘I’ll pay half to you, Bertha, to put in the bank, and the other half is for Dottie to spend how she pleases.’
On the Saturday after her first payday Dottie went off to Stibbington market with one pound, ten shillings in her purse. She returned later that afternoon laden with presents. For her mother, a bottle of Devon Violets perfume, for Rosie and Peter a sugar mouse each, and for Megan a bunch of flame red gladioli.
‘I knows you like them,’ she said in her strong Hampshire accent, blushing shyly as she handed the flowers to Megan.
‘Why, I do. You remember that time when I bought the flowers from Miss Cozens.’ Dottie nodded and blushed even more.
The flowers were placed in a vase in the fireplace just as they had been all those years before. It brought back memories to Megan. How different it had been then; just as well we can’t see into the future, she reflected.
Bertha, of course, thought Dottie had wasted her money, but thanked her grudgingly for the perfume. ‘Though Lord knows when I’ll get the chance to wear it,’ she said.
Megan often thought of Violet and Arthur in London, and would have liked to visit them. But work made that impossible; there was no one she could leave Peter and Rosie with, Lavinia was getting more forgetful by the day, and Dottie, although willing, couldn’t be asked to undertake such a responsibility. Bertha, of course, had quite enough to do.
Then Folly House had a piece of good luck. Megan was asked if Folly House would be willing to take two young German prisoners of war for the summer and autumn. The Government was way behind with the repatriation programme and needed places, not prisons, for the Germans to stay. Henry was agreeable, so Hans and Werner came. They were both only twenty, and once Bertha saw that they were two rather frightened young men, she took them to her heart. Pat, the remaining land girl, moved into the box room above the kitchen, and the German boys were billeted in the old stables formerly occupied by the land girls. There were a few rumblings in the village about the ‘enemy’ being free and living at Folly House, but as the summer wore on the grumbles dissipated, as it was seen that they were good workers and harmless.
From Megan’s point of view they were heaven-sent. They gave her the opportunity to have a little free time with the two children. Rosie was growing into a lovely girl, and Peter was proving himself to be quite a handful now that he was walking. He ran everywhere and loved being chased. Megan loved him so much that sometimes she thought her heart would break with the intensity of her love.
As the weeks and months passed Henry tried to drag himself from the depths of depression. But it was difficult. He was afraid to sleep because he knew the terrifying images of dead and dying men would be waiting for him the moment he closed his eyes. He knew he needed to talk to a psychiatrist: someone who could help rid his mind of the demons tormenting him. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
But strangely enough the arrival of the two Germans helped him a little. Werner, the eldest had been hoping to start training as a doctor before being called into the German army, so Henry found someone he could talk to about things they both understood and were interested in.
They fell into the habit of meeting at weekends in the old stable where the guns were kept. Werner and Hans were both good shots and were helping Pat to learn to shoot now that Molly had left. George had strict instructions from the prison authorities that the Germans should not have access to guns, but he saw no harm in letting them go out with Pat to show her how to shoot pigeons and rabbits.
‘The war is over,’ he said. ‘They are not the enemy any longer.’
Henry agreed, and was glad to resume his duties of cleaning the guns when they came back from a shoot. He gained pleasure from feeling the warm steel barrels and smooth wooden handles, and began to feel less stressed.
Megan noticed this, and when the three men were closeted in the gun room she often took out a tray of tea and cakes to them, accompanied by baby Peter. He adored the attention he received and always wanted to stay.
One hot August afternoon, Henry was in the gun room waiting for Hans and Werner to arrive, ready for the evening’s shoot. Megan called in with Rosie and Peter to say goodbye. She was driving the trap into Stibbington where a friend of Henry’s, Ken Steadman, had promised to take the three of them out
for a sail to the salt marshes in the estuary. Peter kissed Henry goodbye and then climbed into the driving seat of the trap with Megan; she had promised to let him hold the reins.
In the lane Megan passed Hans and Werner on their way to the stables. They waved. ‘We’re off for a sail,’ she called. The two men smiled and stood aside to watch them pass.
The pony and trap trotted down the lane, and as they turned to continue on to Folly House they became aware of a man standing beside them. He had emerged from the copse at the side of the road. ‘I’ve walked through the forest from Stibbington railway station,’ he said by way of explanation. He gazed at the disappearing trap. ‘Was that Megan Lockwood?’
‘Yes,’ replied Werner. ‘Mrs Lockwood with her son and daughter.’
The stranger took out a cigarette and lit it, then proffered the packet to Werner and Hans. ‘The girl is Rosie, I know her,’ he said slowly. ‘But the boy. Who is he?’
Werner laughed. ‘The boy? Why, he is the light of everyone’s lives here at Folly House. He is the son of Mr Henry Lockwood and his wife Megan.’
There was silence, while the stranger drew on his cigarette. Werner took a cigarette and handed the packet back. ‘Thanks,’ he said, lighting his cigarette. There was another long silence and Werner said curiously, ‘Do you know the Lockwoods well?’
‘Not now,’ the stranger replied slowly. ‘I knew them once, a long time ago, but …’ he stopped and put the cigarette packet back in his pocket. He stood looking down the lane to where the trap had now disappeared, and seemed to be thinking. ‘I must be going on,’ he said. ‘I’ve a long way to go.’
‘And where is that?’ asked Hans politely.