The Chestnut Tree

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘I haven’t even been to meet her parents yet, Pops,’ Walter finally replied, still watching his brother with Judy. ‘That isn’t going to be easy. What with Sir Arthur being an admiral. And – well. You know, the Meltons being Old Bexham.’

  ‘I know.’ Hugh took his pipe out of his mouth and pretended to examine the contents of the bowl to conceal his exasperation.

  ‘I was trying to think about what Sir Arthur would make of me. I’ve only just joined the Navy. He’ll probably see me as a bit of a rookie, I am afraid. Sure to, in fact. Want me to wait until I’ve earned my stripes, and all that, before I ask Judy to marry me.’

  ‘That’s why you’ve been thinking of becoming a submariner. Good choice. Nothing like heroism to impress the old salts.’

  Hugh stuck his pipe back in his mouth and gazed up at the stars above them, trying to make sense of the fact that if there was to be a war there had to be submariners, and that even though all submariners were after all somebody or other’s sons, the job was there and had to be done. Hugh had no favourite son, of that he was quite sure – it was just that Walter, his middle boy, was the one who was most like him, so he always felt he knew just how he was feeling. Walter even had his father’s eyes.

  ‘To be perfectly serious, Pops, if you don’t mind,’ Walter insisted, ‘I want to try to get permission to marry Judy before the show starts. If we’re going to be able to get married it has to be now. Before it all gets serious.’

  ‘Of course. Understood, dear boy. Absolutely. But there again it’s not as if you’ve even asked the girl.’

  ‘That is quite correct.’

  ‘She might say no, old thing. You’re not going to know where you are till you ask her. Whole thing could be just a lot of hot air. She certainly seems to be enjoying dancing with your brother.’

  Walter followed his father’s mischievous look. For a moment they both watched Judy and John dancing in what was, after all, perfect innocence.

  ‘Yes,’ Walter said, losing his poise and gulping suddenly. ‘But I mean this is hardly the time or the place, Father.’

  Hugh smiled to himself. He knew from the quite unmistakable look he had seen on Judy’s face when she had first seen Walter that evening how much she was in love with his son yet, as always, he could not resist teasing the boy. His leg-pull was obviously working, judging from the deep frown now furrowing Walter’s normally sunny brow. Walter knew he should have proposed to Judy already but he had been fighting shy of it, so nervous was he of actually making the proposal. He had kept rehearsing the words in his head, and then imagining himself opening his arms and kissing her passionately and joyfully when she said yes, but what had prevented him so far was the possibility that she might refuse him, and he would have made a terrible fool of himself. After all, whatever they felt for each other had so far remained more or less unspoken. Hugh knew that she could refuse Walter, if only for the very best of motives. A war that was now almost certain to break out was a good enough reason for a girl not to want to be married.

  ‘Whatever you might be thinking now,’ he said, seemingly quite out of the blue, ‘it will be worth it. I know what it’s like, old boy. I was exactly the same age as you when I joined up. And when I came to my senses and wondered what the heck I’d done, it was precisely this sort of thing – a summer evening just like this, surrounded by family, wondering whether I’d ever see any of them again, then walking with my father out in the evening air, out into our gardens.

  ‘I remember the smell of stocks on the air as if it was yesterday. The sound of my mother singing at the piano. There we were, at perfect peace it seemed, and just like now, all hell was about to be let loose the other side of the Channel.’ He stopped. ‘But it was all that, a sense of what we were and I believe still are. One knew one had to fight for it, or it would be lost for ever. Despite the grey areas of why we were fighting in the Great War I still saw it as a grand privilege to join in. Thank God, there are no grey areas this time, dear boy. We know what it’s all about. You know what you’re going to fight for, I know. You’re going to fight to save our world.’

  Walter nodded, but he said nothing in reply, because all he could really think about was how to propose to Judy, and when.

  ‘Sit still, will you?’ Rusty scolded her younger brother Mickey, at the same time removing the illicit unlit cigarette from his fingers and putting it in her pocket. ‘You’re a right blooming fidget box.’ She frowned and pulled Daisy, her West Highland terrier, closer to her, as if to get her out of the way of Mickey’s unsettling influence.

  ‘Should be home and in bed, that’s where Mickey should be,’ Tom, her older brother said, filching the cigarette back from his sister’s pocket and quickly lighting it up. ‘Way past his bedtime.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Mickey growled, hoping his deep frown looked as fierce as he intended. ‘I’m allowed to stay up as long as the rest of you now.’

  ‘Then put a sock in it,’ Tom advised. ‘You know how voices will just carry and carry over water until you might as well be on the telephone.’

  The three Todd offspring, Rusty and her two brothers, Tom and Mickey, were sitting in the shadows of their father’s boathouse on the edge of the quays, hoping to catch sight of the return of Mr Kinnersley’s yacht Light Heart from yet another mysterious cross-Channel trip. They were also keeping a weather eye out for their father who was still out fishing. If he should appear first, then it had been agreed between them they should vanish silently into the summer night and stick to their alibi, that they’d been out rabbiting. Their father would not take kindly to the notion of his children spying, least of all on Mr David Kinnersley, one of Bexham’s most eminent gentlemen residents.

  ‘Course we all knows why Rusty ’ere’s come out tonight, don’t we?’ Tom teased, drawing on his Woodbine. ‘’Cos we all knows who’s got a pash on our nobby Mr Kinnersley.’

  ‘Shut up, you.’ Rusty screwed up her face, making a grimace. ‘Or I’ll tell Mum about you giving Mickey cigarettes.’

  ‘You goes red like a beetroot every time he looks at you, Rusty Todd,’ Tom continued. ‘Let alone when he smiles at you.’

  ‘That right?’ Rusty replied. ‘What about you and that Virginia Morrison then? You just have to look at her to go the colour of a Red Duster.’

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Tom widened his eyes and tapped the ash of his smoke with his index finger. ‘She’s the one what does the blushing, not me.’

  ‘Like heck,’ Rusty scoffed, pushing Tom playfully off his perch on the pile of upturned herring crates. ‘I could toast a teacake on your cheeks, so I could.’

  ‘Least she’s the same age as me,’ Tom replied, picking himself up and pinching the top of his sister’s arm in return. ‘She’s not old enough to be my mum.’

  ‘Shhhh!’ They both looked round at Mickey who was pointing to a light in the estuary. ‘Here’s a boat!’

  They watched the bobbing mast light as the craft made its way slowly towards them, the faint throb of the outboard becoming gradually louder.

  ‘That’s him,’ Rusty said jubilantly. ‘That’s the Light Heart all right. I’d know that jib anywhere.’

  ‘Quick! Down behind the crates! Quick!’

  Tom led the way, jumping off his perch and slipping out of sight behind the pile of boxes. Rusty quickly followed, Daisy under her arm, her free hand clasped over the terrier’s muzzle. Mickey followed suit, and from their hiding place the Todds were able to watch the slow arrival of the lone motor yacht as its skipper brought her safely into berth at the very top of the quays.

  ‘I can see his passengers all right,’ Rusty whispered. ‘There’s two at least down below and there’s another come out on deck.’

  ‘More of his fancy women, you reckon?’ Mickey asked, sticking his head a bit higher over the crates to get a better look.

  ‘Well I’ll be,’ Tom said, slowly, as he watched the figure on the deck come into view. ‘That’s no fancy woman. Unless I’m
seeing things, that’s a nun.’

  They all stared, none harder than Rusty who was quite unable to believe her eyes as she watched two more nuns emerging from the cabin to be handed off the boat and up on to the quay by David Kinnersley, immaculate as ever in his white sailing trousers, old school cricketing sweater, and the faded blue nautical cap which he doffed politely as he saw each holy sister safely ashore. Rusty was so used to seeing nothing but glamorous women on board the Light Heart that she found herself to be secretly relieved by the type of passenger with whom David Kinnersley had for some reason chosen to sail into Bexham that evening, while wondering quite what could have prompted the most dashing and eligible man in Bexham to have devoted an evening’s sailing to such a group of unlikely ladies.

  ‘They’re tall’, Mickey whispered, ‘for nuns, specially foreign nuns.’

  Tom scratched his nose thoughtfully as they continued to watch the nuns, now being ushered towards David Kinnersley’s Bentley saloon which was parked and ready waiting for his return, as always, in the road leading to the harbour.

  The Todds fell silent, watching enthralled as the car disappeared into the summer twilight, driven by their hero, and bearing its mysterious cargo away from Bexham.

  ‘Mathilda?’

  Mathilda smiled conspiratorially at her friend Virginia as they hung their coats up in the hall, putting one finger to her lips to remind Virginia of the need for discretion.

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ she called back to her father. ‘It’s only me – and Virginia. We were wondering—’

  ‘Can’t hear you, dear! I’m in the study!’

  Mathilda put her head round the study door and smiled.

  ‘Sorry, Dad. We were just wondering if it would be OK for Virginia to spend the night.’

  ‘OK indeed.’ Lionel sighed heavily, looking up at his daughter over the top of his newspaper. ‘I don’t know why I bothered to have you educated.’

  ‘We wondered if it would be all right,’ Mathilda corrected herself.

  ‘You’ll have to ask your mother.’

  ‘But it’s all right with you, Dad?’

  ‘As I said, you’ll have to ask your mother.’ Lionel turned the page in his paper and flapped it straight. ‘Course it’s all right with me. Or OK – if you’d rather.’

  Lionel smiled the smile he reserved for his daughter when he considered they were secretly conspiring against Maude, to be rewarded in return by Mathilda’s equally special ‘for-Dad-only’ smile.

  ‘You’re an ace, Dad,’ she said, bending down to kiss her father’s forehead. ‘I’ll go and find Mum and ask her, while Virginia rings her mother.’

  ‘How was the film?’

  ‘Super,’ Mathilda replied, with a quick look at Virginia. ‘Absolutely super.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘What did we see?’ Mathilda echoed quickly.

  ‘The Loving Way,’ Virginia said. ‘It was very good.’

  ‘Thought that was the one you saw last week?’

  Mathilda exchanged another quick look with her co-conspirator, widening her eyes in query.

  ‘No, Mr Eastcott,’ Virginia assured him. ‘We saw Wuthering Heights last week. They’re showing The Loving Way this week.’

  ‘You probably got muddled, Dad. When we talked about the trailer probably. Come on, Virginia – you’d better telephone your mother. So she knows where you are.’

  The two girls hurried out of the room, watched benevolently by Lionel, his face glowing with delight at the sight of his beloved daughter in her little navy blue blouse and floor length skirt with matching jacket. He could hardly bear to think what he would do without his darling little Mattie. The one and only thing it sometimes seemed to him that marriage to Maude had brought him was the supreme happiness of being a father to such a daughter. Mathilda was the delight of his life.

  Having suggested that the girls make themselves a cup of cocoa before retiring, Lionel took the opportunity to mix himself a fresh whisky and soda, and much to his horror found himself humming the Black Bottom as he did so. He stopped the moment his daughter came back into the room with a tray of cocoa and a plate of biscuits.

  ‘What was that tune you were humming, Dad?’ Mathilda asked, sitting down as Virginia came into the room behind her. ‘Sounded rather jazzy.’

  ‘Bit before your time, poppet,’ her father muttered, helping himself to one of the biscuits on offer. ‘Something your mother used to dance to.’

  ‘Mum used to love to go dancing. You should take her sometime, Dad.’

  Lionel sighed the sigh of a married martyr, but said nothing. Usually there was no need, since Mathilda was invariably on his side. Not this time, for some reason.

  ‘We could all go dancing one evening,’ Mathilda suggested, surprisingly. ‘At the Pantiles. Mum and you, Virginia and I.’

  Behind her father’s back Mathilda winked at Virginia, because far from going to the cinema that evening, the two girls had just come back from the village dance, something which they knew would give the Eastcotts a twin fit. But Lionel Eastcott’s thoughts were miles away, now that he realised that the wretched tune that had been going round and round in his head was the result of Maude’s lament earlier that evening that they never went dancing any more. He coloured slightly, and to cover this pretended to blow his nose. The Black Bottom indeed. Frightful dance. His mother had hated even the mention of it.

  ‘Asked your mother about Virginia here staying, have you?’ Lionel wondered, taking a good swig of his fresh drink. ‘She won’t be that keen, mind – now she’s a bit short of domestics. You finding this a problem, Virginia? Staff taking themselves off home to prepare for the worst, yes? Driving poor Mrs Eastcott to distraction, I say. And no wonder. Haven’t a thought in their heads for anyone but themselves – hoarding provisions as if it’s the end of the world. Totally nonsensical behaviour, as well as being completely against government directives.’

  ‘My grandparents still have their housemaid, Mr Eastcott,’ Virginia offered. ‘And their head gardener. Jim and Bob, the under gardeners, they’ve enlisted, and Cook’s inclined to come and go whenever she has the time—’

  ‘What I mean,’ Lionel interrupted. ‘Precisely. When it suits them. Driving Mrs Eastcott to distraction. So if she’s a bit odd about you staying, it’s only because of the shortage on the domestic front.’

  There was little objection to Virginia’s staying overnight, as it happened, due to the sympathy Maude had for her daughter’s young friend. She did not particularly like Virginia, considering her to have taken after her mother, someone who, both Lionel and she remembered, had, in her day, been considered fast. But that did not prevent Maude from feeling sorry for the girl, cooped up as she was in her grandparents’ house with no one of her own age to whom she could talk, thanks to her mother’s apparently irreconcilable separation from Virginia’s father. It was actually this split which had brought Virginia’s mother back totally uninvited – or so the gossip had it – to live with her well-heeled parents in Bexham. Lionel had grown up with Virginia’s mother, escorting her on a number of occasions to the monthly dances at the Yacht Club. She had, however, proved a little beyond his social capabilities, not only as a dancer, but also as a companion. Being one of those young men seemingly born old, in the effervescent and flirtatious company of the young Gloria Bishop it had to be said that Lionel had felt positively Neolithic.

  A local girl herself, Maude had also known the young Gloria, which was why, even though she felt sorry for Gloria’s daughter, deep down in her deepest heart Maude still felt that Virginia might not be exactly the ideal choice of friend for Mattie.

  If she had but known it her fears were more than justified, since whenever the two young women decided to plot something which they knew to be forbidden, it was invariably at Virginia’s and not Mathilda’s instigation. Pretending to have been at the cinema when in reality they had been dancing the evening away at the local hop had been Virginia’s idea – although it had to b
e said that as usual Mathilda had taken little persuading. It was not the first time they had played hooky. The two girls had actually attended at least three of the weekly hops at the village hall, giving as their alibis films they had already seen earlier in the week.

  In actual fact their first visit had been born out of less a need to deceive than desperation, supreme boredom having overtaken the two girls as the summer grew longer and hotter, and they had grown tired of talking about fashion, hair and the narrow attitudes of their elders and betters. Besides, the music was good, supplied as it was by a small local dance band, and the boys – once they had overcome their initial shyness at finding such really rather classy girls in their midst – were fun and friendly. Some of them were even excellent dancers. Two in particular stood out, the elder Todd boy who worked in the local boatyard, and Peter Sykes who worked for his father in the Bexham garage.

  Innocent of the regular deception being visited on him by Mattie and Virginia, as he sipped his nightcap of whisky and soda Lionel suddenly announced, ‘We must ask your mother round sometime, Virginia. For supper and bridge. We have regular bridge evenings, you know. I’ll ask Mrs Eastcott to arrange it.’

  Virginia appeared to give Lionel the sweetest of smiles, although it was in fact a smile more to herself than to him. Since returning to live in Bexham she knew exactly what her mother thought of Mr Eastcott, thanks to Gloria’s constant reminders.

  ‘Virginia dear,’ she was fond of sighing, ‘if you must know, I would have shot myself rather than marry stuffy old Lionel Eastcott. I could never have married him. Not if he was the last man on God’s earth. Which if Mr Hitler has his way he may very well turn out to be. What a dreadful thought.’

  Upstairs in her bedroom, a room that she did not share with her husband, Maude listened to the voices below, and the sound of doors opening and shutting. She constantly worried until Mathilda returned home, most especially when she was with Virginia Morrison. She had always been aware of Lionel’s infatuation with Virginia’s mother. Rumour had it that he had once apparently even contemplated proposing to the silly fly-by-night. Not that Gloria Bishop would have done other than laugh at any proposal from Lionel. Having been born and brought up in the same vicinity Maude had known all about Lionel, even before he first asked her out. She was also, alas, acutely aware that when Lionel had proposed to her, she had jumped at his offer, despite his dull reputation.