‘However,’ Roger continued, ‘you must allow me to put things on a proper footing.’ Christopher looked baffled. ‘Firstly,’ Roger went on, ‘you must be waged.’
‘Waged?’
‘Yes. Given a salary. Paid for your work. Secondly, you must allow me to make you more comfortable up here.’ Christopher opened his mouth to protest but Roger raised a hand to silence him. ‘There’s not a lot that can be done with this place but I insist that you don’t starve, that your bedding and your clothes are laundered, that you allow me to provide whatever supplies you need and that you keep the truck up here so that whenever, if ever, you have had enough of it up here, you can get home to the farm. I won’t have you living like a tramp, Christopher.’ Roger was prepared, if his son had refused his terms, to have him forcibly removed from the cottage and, if necessary, certified as insane. He was, therefore, relieved to see that Christopher seemed more than happy to comply.
‘Thanks, Pa.’ He smiled. ‘That sounds great – as long as you’re sure I’m worth it!’
Together they compiled two lists. The first consisted of the items which Fred would deliver by truck on a regular basis each week and the other of materials, tools and items of furniture with which Christopher would transform the cottage – as much as it would be possible to transform it – into the place in which he wished to live and where, when she eventually arrived, as he was convinced she would, he would welcome Georgina.
Alice took some time over deciding what to wear to Roger Bayliss’s party, eventually settling on a well-cut black jersey dress, which she had worn once or twice when she had accompanied her husband to Ministry receptions where she had been expected to make polite conversation with the wives of senior civil servants and other government officials. She had regarded these evenings more as a duty, when she was required to be an asset to James, than a pleasure and she had always sighed with relief when James appeared at her side, a welcome indication that it was almost time for them to leave. She had lost weight since she had been working at Lower Post Stone and the dress, when she tried it on and turned this way and that in front of the long looking glass in the cross-passage, flattered her figure even more than she remembered. With her mother’s pearls, silk stockings and black court shoes she would, she considered modestly, do.
Being short of men for his party, and in view of Oliver Maynard’s hospitality to the Post Stone land girls on the occasion of the cricket match and since then to several ‘hops’ at the camp, Roger had reluctantly included him on his guest list. Oliver, insisting that he would be practically passing Alice’s door, talked Roger into letting him convey her to and from the party. Arriving together, their fellow guests assumed them to be ‘a couple’. Oliver was, Alice felt, slightly overattentive to her, giving her little chance to talk to the other guests, most of whom were well acquainted with each other and included Margery Brewster and her rotund and florid husband. Eileen, aided by her niece Albertine, a robust schoolgirl whose capacious bosom resembled her aunt’s, refilled sherry glasses, ladled out mulled wine and offered a choice between Eileen’s cheese straws or, as the evening progressed, her mince pies and slices of the Christmas cake for which she had been accumulating ingredients throughout the year. At one point there was a slight disturbance when, flushed, overexcited and to the acute embarrassment of her husband, Margery Brewster fell off a chair and found it so amusing that it took both her husband and Oliver Maynard to get her back onto her feet.
Roger, who had been curious to know what Alice would look like dressed for an occasion such as this one, was enchanted with what he saw. He observed her as much and as closely as he could without his interest attracting the attention of his other guests. He saw her eyes explore his warm, well-furnished sitting room and when she moved closer to a large oil painting hanging above the fireplace, he joined her.
‘My grandfather,’ he said. ‘Painted by a man called Pickersgill in the 1890s. And that’s his wife – my grandfather’s wife, I mean of course. Elizabeth Anne Clifton.’ They crossed the room and Alice stood gazing at the serene face framed against a dark background by a pale, ruched lace cap, its delicate ribbons tied under her chin. Oliver Maynard had joined them.
‘Fine-looking woman,’ he said but the woman he was looking at was Alice and Roger was aware of this.
‘She is beautiful!’ Alice said, turning to Roger. ‘And I think I see a trace of a family likeness. Something about the set of the eyes, perhaps.’
‘Interesting,’ Roger said. His expression had for once lost its familiar closed, defensive look. ‘That was exactly what my wife – what Frances – always said. If we’d had a daughter we would have called her Elizabeth Anne.’
Later, the interior of Oliver’s car was cold. Condensation ran down the windows and frost glittered in the headlights.
‘Nice party,’ Oliver said and suggested that Alice might feel like ‘going on’ somewhere. ‘Not that there’s anywhere to “go on” to in this God-forsaken neck of the woods.’ Alice said that anyway she needed to get back to the hostel. Oliver grunted, took a corner rather too fast, skidded on a patch of black ice and had to struggle to avoid slewing into the hedge. He was angry with himself and apologised profusely.
‘That was unforgivable. Unforgivable. Reprehensible behaviour. Reprehensible…’ For some reason, perhaps because it had been a pleasant evening, perhaps because of the warmth of Roger’s smile and the attentive way in which he had helped her into her coat when it was over, she found Oliver’s abject apology amusing.
‘Don’t apologise,’ she laughed. ‘It was rather exciting!’ Oliver glanced at her. Reflected light from the dimmed headlights revealed just enough to confirm that she was smiling. The fact that she was pleased with him rounded off his evening. As they drew up outside the farmhouse he leant across and kissed her mouth. It was a light, unassuming kiss and, as such, Alice briefly returned it, getting quickly out of the car, closing its door behind her and calling out goodnight and thanking him for the lift as she picked her way along the icy path and into the porch.
On his homeward drive Oliver experimented with a few controlled slides which resulted in his arrival at the camp with a significant dent in his offside mudguard.
‘I ’ear from Eileen as Mrs Brewster enjoyed ’erself las’ night!’ Rose said next morning, with a suggestion of disapproval in her sharp Devonian voice. ‘Fallin’ about a bit, Eileen says!’
‘Mrs Brewster lost her balance, Rose.’ Alice made a point of discouraging gossip where those in authority were concerned.
‘Mrs Brewster should take a drop more water with it!’ Rose said virtuously.
This was the first intimation Alice had regarding Margery Brewster’s problem with alcohol. Rose’s comment had the effect of reminding her that once or twice she had caught a whiff of spirits on Margery’s breath and once she had brought a bottle into the hostel and insisted that Alice joined her in a sip of gin-and-orange at the kitchen table.
‘Don’t fret, Alice!’ she had laughed, her face flushed slightly from the pleasure of the drink. ‘Your charges won’t be back for hours yet! Cheers, my dear! Down the hatch! Mud in your eye and all that!’
On the second of Fred’s trips up into the woodland with supplies for Christopher, Alice had ridden with him, wedged into the passenger seat as the truck lurched uncomfortably up the uneven track. There were places where recent heavy rain had scoured its surface, leaving deep potholes and forcing Fred to make detours round them, the truck, with two wheels halfway up the steep bank, tipping perilously and causing his cargo to slide from side to side. In addition to the regular supplies of food, drink and clean laundry, Fred was today delivering an old sofa which had, years previously, been replaced in the Bayliss sitting room and had lain since in the attic, gathering dust and being nibbled at by mice. This, Christopher had decided, when spread with the half-dozen sheepskins which had accumulated in the tackle room, would provide a warm and practical place for him to relax and probably sleep, in front of his f
ire on cold nights in January and February.
Christopher’s pulse had quickened when he saw that there was someone sitting beside Fred in the cab of the truck. Almost at once he had realised it was Alice Todd who was Fred’s passenger and not Georgina as he had at first hoped. He recovered quickly and approached Alice with the well-mannered charm she remembered from before he was ill.
‘Mrs Todd!’ He shook her hand. ‘How very nice to see you!’
Alice confessed that everyone at Post Stone had heard so much about the woodsmen’s cottage that she had been unable to resist an opportunity to inspect it so that she could report back to the girls. She presented him with the treacle tart that Rose had made for his supper.
What Alice saw as she entered the cottage was very different from the scene that had greeted Roger Bayliss two weeks previously. The walls and ceiling had been whitewashed. Cooking pots hung beside the wood burner. The camp bed was made up. There were books on the shelves and Christopher’s old spaniel, sprawling across a worn rug in front of the fire, thumped her tail as Alice watched her master light the oil lamps.
‘We’ll bring in the furniture,’ Christopher said. ‘Then you’ll have somewhere comfortable to sit while you drink your tea!’
The sofa, its broken springs barely audible under the skeepskins, was so comfortable and the warmth of the cottage so soothing that Alice, whose previous night’s sleep had been disturbed by Gwennan, first asking for an aspirin and then for some warm oil to soothe an aching ear, almost fell asleep over her cup of tea while Fred unloaded the rest of Christopher’s supplies.
‘Youse’ll be comin’ ’ome for Christmas, I s’pose?’ Fred enquired on Eileen’s instructions. Christopher answered evasively and deliberately inaudibly. ‘Eh?’ Fred insisted and Christopher raised his voice slightly and said he thought probably not, in the circumstances. ‘An’ what circumstances be they?’ Fred persisted. But he was retreating, lowering his head under the lintel of the door and muttering darkly to himself. ‘A son oughta spend Christmas with his pa, I reckon…’ Then he raised his voice. ‘Reckon we should be on our way, Mrs Todd, if it’s all the same to you.’ He was in the cab with the engine running as Alice said her farewells.
‘And the girls?’ Christopher enquired, handing her into the truck. ‘Everyone well?’
Alice assured him that everyone was very well indeed. She knew that what he wanted was news of Georgina and drew a deep breath.
‘Georgina is leaving us,’ she said, as lightly as she could.
‘Leaving?’ He was standing absolutely still, his face level with hers.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She’s joined some flying organisation – one that moves RAF planes from one airfield to another. They’re called—’
‘Ferry pilots… Yes, I know what they’re called, Mrs Todd.’ His interruption had been curt. Almost rude. ‘I should have guessed,’ he said flatly. ‘Her flying experience. The de Havilland godfather, and so on.’ He had a hazel switch in his hand and began striking the side of his wellington boot with it, thwack, thwack, thwack, just as his father did with his crop against the leather of his riding boots when he was irritated. There was a small, tense silence while Fred revved the engine of the truck.
‘Shouldn’t you talk, the pair of you?’ Alice asked. ‘Come and see her before she goes!’ She was uncertain that he had heard her. He seemed lost in his thoughts.
‘We did talk, Mrs Todd,’ he said at last. ‘And she knows where I am if she wants me.’
The Christmas break was looming. The girls bought presents to take home to their mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters and grandparents, they ironed their best frocks and washed their hair. As the preparations continued the weather became cold, then colder still until the frost lay thick and crackling all through the days, the ice in the drinking troughs was six inches thick and the yard pump froze solid.
‘Us’ll ’ave snow afore us sees the back of this lot,’ Ferdie announced, eyeing the bleak grey sky and turning his back on an icy easterly wind. ‘On’y needs for this wind to back round to the north and we’ll cop it, you mark my words!’ While Mabel spent her Christmas at Lower Post Stone with her grandmother and little Arthur, Ferdie was to visit his widowed sister, bearing with him a brace of pheasants and a salmon, all poached from his employer.
By the morning of Christmas Eve the goose was plucked, stuffed and waiting in the Lower Post Stone pantry for the moment, on Christmas morning, when Rose would slide it into the oven. The girls, their suitcases packed and lined up in the cross-passage, ready for when Fred would arrive to collect them and deliver them to the railway station, were hurrying through their morning tasks when the first flakes of snow shimmied down the wind. Ferdie lurched painfully across the yard; his damaged bones always hurt him more when the weather was foul.
‘See that?’ he roared, pointing north to where the sky was dark with lowering cloud. ‘Didn’t I say? Due north that wind be now! And the snow baint far behind ’un neither!’
By the time the girls had returned to Lower Post Stone, changed their clothes and, clutching their suitcases and parcels, were climbing, shivering, into the back of Fred’s truck, the landscape was solidifying into a white blur. Lionel had already arrived and with Georgina, well wrapped, on the pillion seat of his motorbike, had ridden carefully away along the slippery lane and headed towards their home.
Alice, Hester and Mabel had waved goodbye from the porch and then run, shuddering with cold, back into the warm farmhouse. Gwennan, on the grounds that she thought she might be coming down with something but possibly simply to avoid being asked to help prepare the vegetables for Christmas dinner, went to bed with a hot-water bottle. An hour passed and a sort of peace descended on the farmhouse, broken only from time to time by squeals of pleasure from Arthur, who was playing on the recreation room floor with Edward-John’s train set. The snow, spiralling down, the flakes huge and soft, now blanketed the landscape and, driven by the wind, was beginning to pile up into significant drifts. Alice, her larder stocked with enough food to feed her reduced household for at least two days, felt curiously safe and satisfied as, with her fingertips, she cleared the condensation from her window and peered out at the immaculate snowy scene.
Then, to her surprise, she saw Fred’s truck labouring cautiously along the snow-filled lane towards her. Why, she wondered, had he returned to Lower Post Stone and not to the higher farm where his cottage stood, close to the byres and barns where his work lay?
She watched as the truck slithered to a stop outside the gate. Amazed, she saw her girls, one after the other, climb down from the rear of the truck and, clutching their suitcases and parcels, troop forlornly through the deep snow, up the path and back into the farmhouse.
‘There’s no trains runnin’!’ Marion wailed.
‘Some goods-wagons ’as got derailed up Taunton way and they’ve blocked the track! What with the snow and all, no one can do nothin’ so they’ve on’y gone and closed the bleedin’ line!’
‘There’s no trains runnin’ in or out!’
‘So we can’t go home!’
‘We can’t go home!’ they chorused in unison, their eyes on Alice as though she, by some miracle, could change things.
‘I’m so friggin cold, Mrs Todd!’ Annie hissed between chattering teeth.
Alice reached for the teapot. She ordered the weeping, shivering girls to go to their rooms and change into warm clothes. She decided to offer them hot buttered toast and it was when she went to the bread cupboard that the full implications of the situation hit her. She had food enough for those left in her charge over Christmas and, at a pinch, for a couple of days after it. But not enough to feed the girls who had been unable to make their journeys home. Gwennan, in her dressing gown and clutching her hot-water bottle, burst into the kitchen.
‘Fred’s got the truck stuck in a snowdrift, just along the lane, Mrs Todd! I saw him from my window! He tried to dig himself out, like! But then he left the truck and it looks like he’s goi
ng to walk back to the higher farm! But will he get there, Mrs Todd?’ There was a slightly unhealthy excitement in Gwennan’s delivery of this news, as though, in her dark and Celtic way, she relished it. ‘Or will he die in the snow like Captain Scott?’
With the girls warmed and sipping hot tea, Alice set about checking her supplies. The goose, sliced thinly, would feed them all on Christmas Day and there was no shortage of potatoes and swedes. She checked the pantry shelves and found tins of beans and of spam. There was a full can of milk but when that was gone it might be some time before any more arrived from the snow-bound dairy at Higher Post Stone. Bread would be the main problem. With no packed lunches to provide for four days, Alice had ordered only two loaves. Long and reassuring as they were, they would not last long now that she had her full complement of mouths to feed.
Rose, basking in the company of her son Dave, and enjoying the prospect of showing him off to Alice over Christmas lunch next day, had seen the girls return and knew, only too well, the implications of this where the hostel catering arrangements were concerned. Leaving Dave to sleep off the enormous lunch she had fed him, Rose waded through the loose snow of the yard and joined Alice in the kitchen.
‘Whatever will you do?’ she demanded dramatically – there was nothing Rose enjoyed more than an impending disaster. ‘This could go on for weeks, you know! Coupla years ago we was snowed in for almost a month! Couldn’t get in nor out! It’s the steepness, see, of the lanes!’ Alice had noticed the steepness of the lanes and was not comforted by what she heard.
‘The first thing, Rose, is tonight’s supper. We’d better open those tins of spam, fry some onions, chop up some potatoes and make a hash. The second thing is to let Mr Bayliss know that the girls didn’t get away and that we’re snowed in here and already short of bread and milk. I’ll go and telephone him now.’ Alice pulled on her waterproof coat and her rubber boots and, with her scarf wound tightly round her neck, made her way across the yard, her boots sinking into deep, soft snow. It was only half past two but because of the thick layer of leaden cloud it was already almost dark. Alice fumbled her way into the barn where the telephone was and shone her torch onto the dial. Roger Bayliss would know what to do. He’d dig out the stranded truck and send a tractor loaded with supplies down the valley to Lower Post Stone. She lifted the receiver. There was no dialling tone. The line was dead.
Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings Page 21