‘We should throw a party,’ she said suddenly.
‘Are you mad? There’s no food to spare for parties these days, my dear –’ Clemence was half-amused, half-annoyed.
‘Then why not ask people to bring their own? Everyone must bring a contribution, and Meadowcroft will provide the wine and we’ll be the hosts. It would be such a lark, wouldn’t it? We’ll leave it until you’re feeling better, naturally, and until we can be sure Dad will be here. Perhaps at Hallowe’en, then we can deck the gardens up with Chinese lanterns and pumpkins and be real country folk. What do you say?’
‘We’ll see,’ Clemence said noncommittally, but already Ellen could tell that her busy mind was organising just how the invitations could be worded so that people wouldn’t think it too demeaning to bring their own food!
Pedalling home from Peartree Farm some weeks later, aching less now than on the first days, Ellen congratulated herself. The idea of a party had been inspired, and her mother had been far more cheerful ever since she’d decided to organise it. In fact, the whole atmosphere in Meadowcroft had been considerably less tense of late.
It helped that Clemence and Charlotte Prole had taken to one another like the proverbial ducks to water. Clemence had spent some time poring over old books to try and trace the background of the Proles of Deal, and had been even more triumphant to find that her own maternal grandmother was a very distant cousin of Charlotte’s. Clemence was therefore delighted that Ellen and dear Charlotte should be having such fun working on the farm … a comment that had the two girls doubled up with laughter, and wincing in the middle of it with all the aches and pains that came from ‘having such fun’…
Ellen was still smiling at the memory. The invitations were being prepared, and the Hallowe’en party would at least cheer everybody up from the gloom of the war. There had been shorter letters than usual from Angel lately, the most telling ones being sent to her sister, and not for her parents’ eyes.
‘We really thought the assault at the Somme was going to end it all, and I don’t have to tell you how that ended. Rumours are rife now about the stupidity of the officers letting our boys march slowly to their deaths instead of ordering them to charge at the Germans,’ Angel wrote.
‘We can’t dispute the strength of the German lines, however much the newspaper cartoons try to ridicule it. It’s simply terrible, Ellen. The fighting is raging again at Ypres and at Passchendaele, and the wounded must surely outnumber the Allied armies. I sometimes wonder how we can go on.
‘The hospitals are stretched to the limits, and I couldn’t begin to describe the conditions now. Beds in corridors, the dead taken out almost before they’ve stopped breathing to make way for the next casualty, and everyone hardened to the dreadful sights while still trying to be as humane as possible.
‘I hear so little from Jacques, although we try to make at least one telephone call a week, to reassure each other. I’m so fearful for him, Ellen. I’m sorry to sound such a misery. I hope all goes well at home. Don’t let Mother know how depressed I am. She’d be campaigning for my release too, and I mean to stick it out until the end. I have to, as long as Jacques is here.
‘My best love, Angel.’
The letter disturbed Ellen more than anything. Angel had always been the brightest one, strong and brave, and now she sounded almost defeated. Ellen cycled along the autumn lanes, head down as she neared Meadowcroft, worrying about Angel.
‘I kept telling myself it must be you that I kept seeing, and not a mirage,’ a voice that she knew said lazily from a field alongside her.
Ellen almost fell off her bicycle. She had tried very hard and with great success to avoid seeing anything of Peter. And now here he was, just like that other time, startling her, and making her heart leap uncontrollably in her chest at the sight of him.
He leaned on the gate, dark and rugged and thoughtful. She had always considered him to be an intelligent, thinking man, which was one of the things she’d admired most about him.
‘Are you always going to make me jump like that?’ she snapped.
‘If it’s the only way I can get you to talk to me, then I suppose I am,’ his country drawl, smooth as cream, was more pronounced as he looked her up and down in her Land Army clothes, her boots caked in something unspeakable, smudges of dirt on her face and hands. She felt hot and unkempt and was annoyed with herself for caring.
‘What do you want to talk to me about?’ she said pointedly, poised like a bird for flight.
Peter leapt the field gate in one easy movement. His slight limp didn’t prevent him from being as agile as any man when he chose to be. Nor as handsome and desirable and as damnably dear to her, she thought, with a catch in her throat.
‘I met your mother in the village today,’ he said calmly.
Oh no … even as she heard the words, Ellen guessed what was coming. Her mother didn’t know of the rift between her daughter and the young farmer, nor the reason for it, and had presumably just assumed that Ellen had moved on to other pursuits with her usual impatience.
‘I’ve been invited to a party,’ Peter went on relentlessly.
‘You’ll refuse, of course.’
‘Why should I?’
She looked at him helplessly.
‘Peter, you know why! I should be embarrassed every time I looked at you –’
‘You’re not embarrassed now, are you?’
She bit her lip. His hand, strong and tanned, was on the handlebar of her bicycle. If she wrenched it away from him, he’d probably lose his balance and go sprawling.
‘You know I am,’ she said in a low voice.
‘I fail to see why. I’m not embarrassed.’ He was deliberately blocking out all that had gone before. But she couldn’t do that. It was too painful a memory. Ellen had never been afraid to look the truth in the face before, and she despised herself for doing it now. She was also furious with Peter for forcing the words out of her.
‘I can’t forget that you know what a fool I made of myself, that’s why. You know my shame, and that’s something I’m not willing to share with anyone. I’ve got too much pride, Peter, and I’d be glad if you’d let me go, please!’
This time she did wrench the bicycle away from him, straddling it with shaking legs, her long skirt threatening to catch in the wheels where she had neglected to hitch it up properly. Her eyes stung blindly as she pedalled furiously. His voice followed her.
‘I’ll see you at the party, Ellen.’
He couldn’t be such a cad as to be there after all that, she thought! Had he guessed at her feelings for him from her strangled words? She couldn’t bear it if he had. He was playing with her, like a cat with a mouse, and if it was a way of punishing her for being lower than the pedestal he had put her on, then he was succeeding very well.
She marched into the house, seeking out her mother. There was a new intake of four billeted soldiers that day, and Clemence was busily organising their sleeping quarters with the housekeeper. As soon as she could get her alone, Ellen stormed into her.
‘Mother, how could you invite Peter Chard to the Hallowe’en party without asking me?’
‘My dear girl, what an extraordinary question,’ Clemence said mildly. ‘I thought Mr Chard was a friend of yours. We’re inviting everyone from the surrounding farms, so we could hardly leave him out! Besides, he’s been most generous with his offers of fruit and cream for the day. It will have to be a buffet table, of course, we couldn’t have anything grander, but I’m sure everyone will be delighted with the result. I thought we might raffle a few things as well, and send the money we raise to the Soldiers’ Comfort Fund. What do you think?’
Ellen was speechless. Clemence was right back on form with her organising abilities, dismissing the question of whether Ellen wanted Peter Chard at the party or not as one of minuscule importance. It was just that to her, of course. It was only to Ellen herself that the humiliation of seeing Peter here at Meadowcroft again was beginning to assume gigantic proporti
ons.
She knew how foolish she was being. She should be able to brush aside all memory of the episode with Andrew Pender. With a start, she realised she could hardly remember his face. It wasn’t the shame of being so gullible that haunted her. It was the fact that Peter knew. Peter had witnessed it, and it was Peter that she loved, and she wanted his respect above all things.
How conventional she was after all! And how little one knew about oneself until faced with unexpected situations. Who ever would have thought Louise would defy Clemence, when she had been so much under her mother’s thumb? Who would have expected Angel to become so excellent a nurse and ambulance driver, and journey across France to find the man she loved?
‘I wish I could be at the Hallowe’en party,’ Angel wrote when she heard about it. ‘It sounds such fun, Ellen, and just like the old days. I shall be thinking of you all, and envying you. Mother sounds so much better, and I know we have you to thank for that. She never says it in so many words, naturally, Mother being Mother, but her letters are full of how helpful Ellen is, and how hard Ellen works at Peartree Farm, and how she met Farmer Green’s wife in the village and heard how much they think of Ellen – and all the other girls, she adds, as an afterthought! But it’s clear that Ellen is quite the little heroine, darling!’
Ellen smiled ruefully. To hear her and Clemence wrangling sometimes, no one would think Clemence was glad to have her at home. But yes, her mother was better. She had less time to think about herself with the party to arrange, and the day was almost on them. They prayed for fine weather, but if rain was threatened, there was the old marquee to erect.
It was decided to put it up anyway, just in case, and the billeted soldiers assisted cheerfully. And long before the party began, Ellen resolutely decided that as far as she was concerned, Peter Chard was just another guest at her mother’s party. This was Clemence’s day, and even Fred, who came down from Yorkshire especially, was loud in his praise at all the hard work his wife had put into it.
The party was to be held in the afternoon. There couldn’t be lighted lanterns and fireworks in the evening, which may alert enemy aircraft, however distant and sleepy the Somerset countryside seemed. Clemence was cross that the Germans should ruin their party in this way, but it hardly mattered. The atmosphere was one of gaiety, almost like pre-war days, except for those in uniform sprinkled among the guests.
The billeted soldiers had helped Ellen and Clemence and Fred make the Jack-o’-Lanterns to string up in the marquee. They were made from hollowed out mangel-wurzels with faces carved on them and with candles placed inside. There was plenty of Somerset cider as well as Meadowcroft wine. The raffles for some of Clemence’s good pieces of china and the lowlier fruit cakes contributed by farmers’ wives, were conducted with good nature and produced outrageously rewarding amounts of money for the Soldiers’ Comfort Fund.
‘I say, we’ve been sent to the wrong farm, haven’t we?’ Charlotte nudged Ellen in the ribs as the two of them finished their fish paste sandwiches that disguised the fact that there was only a smear of butter on the bread.
Ellen followed her glance. Peter had arrived late, and she had thought he wasn’t coming. She didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry to see him. He nodded at her briefly and then turned his back on her as the music for dancing began.
‘Excuse me, old thing,’ Charlotte said enthusiastically. ‘If I don’t manage a dance with that handsome chap, then I’m not half the girl I think I am!’
Ellen watched her weave her way through the crowds. Charlotte was as outgoing as she, and together they made a good pair. But not today. Ellen was tongue-tied at the sight of Peter, and spent the next half hour rehearsing what to say when he asked her to dance.
She watched him cavorting clumsily around on the patch of grass left free for dancing. First with Charlotte, then with his own Land Girls who had arrived before him. He danced with May and Lucy, and several of the older ladies. He asked Clemence to dance, and was graciously accepted.
By the end of the party, everyone said what a splendid time they had had, and how generous it was of Lady Bannister to arrange it. Everyone was far too excited at this pleasant interlude in the middle of a war to notice that the main instigator of the party had a hard job not to cry as the Bannister family finally waved their guests good-bye.
It was just too ridiculous to be so upset, Ellen thought furiously, as she went to her bedroom to kick off her shoes and change out of her finery into something less constricting. For a moment she caught sight of herself in the mirror, and couldn’t miss the misery in her eyes before she looked quickly away.
He had danced with everyone else but her, she raged. As if to show the world, and Ellen Bannister in particular, that he cared nothing about her at all.
Chapter 23
‘Angel, can you hear me?’ Jacques swore silently at the inefficient phone. As well as the poor service, the air around Brighton Belle seemed to rock with aircraft noise, and there was an impatient jostling behind him for others waiting to use the one available telephone.
‘Not very well!’ Her voice was faint and edgy. They had been waiting hours to get a call through to each other, but with Christmas looming in a few weeks, everyone else was trying to do the same thing.
‘I said I can’t get leave until the New Year. Can you get over here at all, even for a couple of hours?’
‘Oh, Jacques!’ Frustration made her even edgier. She had so hoped that they could spend part of Christmas together. ‘I’ll see what I can do, but supposing I get there and you’re on duty?’
‘If you come in the afternoon, I’ll be damned sure I’m free. Just let me know which day and I’ll meet you. Look, I’m sorry, Angel, but I’ll have to go. There’s a stream of chaps behind me wanting to use the phone. Let me know, all right?’
‘All right. Jacques, I love you –’
Her voice dwindled as she realised she was talking to thin air. He had either hung up or they had been cut off as usual. Angel slammed the receiver down in a fury, tears smarting her eyes. It seemed an eternity ago that they had left the chateau in Bordeaux so gloriously happy, newly-engaged, and with the feeling that they had the world at their feet.
Now, Angel sometimes felt that the whole world was conspiring to keep them apart. The Germans, the entire Allied forces, the nursing system, all made outrageous demands on their time and their energies. Like everyone else, she was war-weary, and wondering, like all those who dared to put it into words, if it was ever going to end. And if it did, what it was going to solve.
The only certainty was that there would be thousands of broken homes, wives without husbands, mothers without sons, girls without sweethearts … she shivered. There would also be families without daughters, she thought fearfully, knowing that she was in the grip of the first real attack of nerves she had experienced for some time.
‘Are you going to cling on to that phone all day, Bannister?’ a voice said crossly, as another nurse pushed past her.
‘I’m sorry, Moss.’ She answered like an automaton, moving away without being aware of her feet touching the ground. For a moment she was lost, living among people with no real identities. She felt like shouting it to the world. This is me. I’m alive. I have a given name. I’m Angel, with the special, beautiful name chosen for me by my father…
Her own choking tears were suddenly the only sound in her head. She felt a great wave of nostalgia for her father, for things to be the way they had always been, before the holocaust of the war, before she had discovered that her father had feet of clay like everyone else, when there was still time for gentleness and beauty and love…
‘I say, Bannister, are you all right?’ Moss had abandoned her attempts to make her phone call, and was holding onto Angel’s arm. Angel felt the tightening of the capable fingers as though they were pincers. She tried to focus on the girl, and the face became a mist, all eyes, rounded and angular shapes, gaping mouths that swirled and then merged into nothing.
She awoke
in her own bed, with Sister Therese holding her pulse and tut-tutting severely.
‘You’re a foolish girl for not eating properly,’ the nun said in the patois of her native southern France. ‘What use are you to the patients or the Abbey if you don’t have the strength to carry on, Bannister?’
She spoke the name with a grand flourish at the end. Bannisterre…
‘My name is Angel. Angelique,’ she mumbled ineptly. The nun smiled.
‘Then in private, I shall call you Angelique. Such a pretty name. But why do you not eat properly?’ Sister Therese persisted in the stupid questioning. Didn’t she know why Angel couldn’t eat! It was perfectly logical.
‘The patients need nourishment. I leave some of my food, and they can have more. I don’t need it.’
Perhaps an old-fashioned novel would call her lovesick. Unable to eat because she was pining over her lover … such sentiments were enough to make Angel cringe, and anyway they were untrue. She had always had a hearty appetite. It wasn’t only the meagre rations that made her refuse the food. It was the appalling feeling of nausea whenever she was faced with it. She couldn’t rid herself of the thought that while she was eating, men were dying, unable to swallow one mouthful.
‘My dear, you do need it. You are helping no one, least of all yourself. There are various names for your condition –’
‘I know the nurses’ favourite one. Sitophobia!’
‘So you have suspected it for yourself –’
‘Sister Therese, I do not have a fear of food,’ Angel said carefully. ‘I’m not mad in the head –’
‘Of course not,’ the nun spoke soothingly, as if to a child. ‘You’ve merely been neglecting yourself in your wish to help others. It’s admirable, Angelique, but it cannot go on.’
Angel stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’
The nun looked at her thoughtfully. Angel was more slender than when she had arrived at the Abbey, seemingly as fragile as though a strong breeze would snap her in two.
The Bannister Girls Page 31