The Chestnut Tree

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘For my sins, on occasions, yes, darlin’, I do. Richards! Stop playing that dreadfully morbid piece, and play something a little more lively.’

  ‘Madame.’

  The butler looked across at his mistress, a hurt expression in his eyes, and started to play a Strauss waltz instead, always popular with Madame Gran.

  ‘That’s better. So.’ She turned to Meggie. ‘So, what is it you want me to do, or say, or write? Is it one – or all three?’

  ‘Write would be best. Could you write and ask the Meltons to come and stay at Cucklington with us?’

  ‘Cucklington? But we haven’t any intention of going to Cuckers. We are staying in London. No one, not even Hitler, moves us out of London, darlin’, certainly not. Brook Street is Brook Street, and here we stay, Richards and I. For the duration.’

  ‘But supposing it becomes Brook Strasse?’

  ‘Not while I am in it, it won’t. No, here we stay, for the duration, Richards and I. The royal family are in Buckingham Palace, and Mrs Gore-Stewart is in Brook Street, and has been since war was declared seven months ago.’

  ‘But Madame Gran, I really would, please, please, like you – really – to go to Cucklington, and then we could ask Judy to come and stay with us and be organised into something useful. That way her mother would bring her back to Bexham, and, eventually, Judy could live happily ever after with Walter, when he gets back from Somewhere Terribly Secret. You see, the stuffy old things, the Meltons, are terribly against Walter – you remember Walter Tate? Lovely, lively family, and if you were on their side, well, it would all be different, wouldn’t it? I mean, quite eventually, it might bring them round.’

  There was a pause while Mrs Gore-Stewart considered this plan. Meggie knew that Madame Gran was deeply romantic, and against the older generation’s interfering in the matters of the young.

  ‘She’s a terrible old snob nowadays, old Elizabeth Melton, and nothing much to be upsy dupsy about either, I mean ancestrally speaking, that is the silly thing. Really. But there you are, admirables’ wives do get a bit hoity toity on occasions – all that gold in the yacht clubs, and people saluting so hard they fall over.’

  ‘So you will write to Lady Em and ask her, darling Madame Gran?’

  ‘Oh, very well. Doubtless she’s sick to death of Scotland now, anyway – nothing but mountains, lochs and sea, not to mention heather. I dare say she can’t wait to bring Judy back to Bexham, if only to get her hair permed.’

  ‘What will you say?’

  ‘Say? I shall say she is needed for my classes. I shall say that I need Judy.’

  Meggie’s mouth dropped open, but only for a second before she burst into laughter. ‘Your what?’

  ‘I know, I know. Don’t laugh, naughty Meggie. It’s Richards. He’s heard on the grapevine that what will be needed is groups of people, in sort of classes, making things. Not socks so much, although those too, but perhaps much more ghastly things – nets for hiding under and all sorts and stuffs of things. Much better than just knitting socks, which let’s face it they usually only used, in the last war anyway, to clean out their guns. Yes, Richards came to me with the idea, and we were going to start it up here, part of the WVS initiative and all that, but I do see, we should go to Cuckers, because there is yards more room there, and we could have teams and teams of people all making and doing like mad. But we are not leaving London because of bombs, is that understood? We are leaving London because of jobs. Jobs is what women are good at. Jobs, and managing men.’

  Just at that moment Richards stopped playing the piano, finishing on a nice round of gaiety from Vienna, of all places. Still, Meggie realised, it was awfully difficult to play something classical without straying into the German composers, and that was the truth.

  ‘Yes, managing men and jobs, that is what we women are best at.’

  Remembering the long conversations that she and Richards had enjoyed over the past days, and catching him raising his eyes to heaven behind his mistress’s back, it occurred to Meggie that managing women might be Richards’s forte. So, as darkness fell, plunging London once more into blackout, Richards took Madame Gran’s letter to Lady Melton, demanding Judy’s presence at Cuckers to help the war effort, to the post.

  Naturally, it being wartime, it was some considerable time before Lady Melton received it, due to one thing and another – mostly the fact that the postman’s bicycle had received a hit, not from enemy aircraft but from a wall he crashed it into after a visit to the local hostelry. But whatever the reason, the bicycle had taken ages to mend, because most of the spare parts had to be made at the local garage, the owner of which was also recovering from a similar sort of accident.

  On the last night before the letter finally reached its destination, Judy tossed and turned in her narrow, uncomfortable, iron-framed bed. Outside, rain driven in hard from the Atlantic swept up the glen and lashed the windows of the granite-walled house, and the image of Walter hundreds of feet down in the sea would not be moved from Judy’s sleepless head. Finally, ashamed of her self-pity and yet at the same time more determined than ever that she and Walter should not be kept apart, Judy made her mind up once and for all. She would take whatever money she could find, even if it wasn’t enough to get her as far as London, let alone Bexham, and then she would hitchhike the rest of the way. She had to get back to Bexham, to where those she loved lived. To Bexham, while it was still there, and while they were all still there.

  ‘Where on earth have you been, Maude?’ Lionel demanded, peeling off his khaki tunic top and carefully placing his broomstick-cum-bayonet in the umbrella stand. ‘You keep disappearing.’

  ‘Since your lot are none too keen on letting ladies join in your fun and games—’

  ‘Fun and games?’ Lionel thundered, hanging his military headgear on the peg he normally reserved for his motoring cap. ‘I’ll have you know, Maude, the British Local Defence Volunteers are not being assembled for the purposes of fun and games. There is a war on, may I remind you?’

  ‘Which is precisely why I am learning to drive, Lionel. So that I may also play a part in the defence of our country.’

  ‘This is not women’s work, Maude. War is men’s work, not women’s work.’

  ‘Broomsticks are usually women’s work, Lionel.’ Maude threw a disparaging look towards the dummy rifle in the hall.

  ‘It is not a broomstick. We have been issued with new wooden rifles. And if you shake it, it makes a sound like a machine gun. Little bits of metal inside, d’you see?’ Lionel fetched his new weapon and demonstrated its capabilities.

  ‘Oh, goodness, Lionel, I should think my driving will frighten the Nazis more than that thing.’

  ‘You and your driving. Anyone would think that no one had ever been in a motor car before. And I trust to it that you’re not encouraging young Mattie to take to the wheel. We can do without too many women drivers, thank you. Where is she, anyway? I haven’t seen her for days.’

  ‘Mattie is also learning how to drive, Lionel. And before you go working yourself into a blue fit, it was her own idea. She and her friend Virginia thought of it altogether separately. They want to drive ambulances. Virginia is even talking about joining the army so she could be a staff driver.’

  ‘So she could gad about with men in uniform more likely,’ Lionel grumbled. ‘Man mad, that girl. Not a good influence on our Mattie at all.’

  ‘Lionel, there’s a war on, remember? Things are going to get a lot different all over the place, round here included, if it goes on for some time – which they say it will. I mean, it has certainly not been all over by Christmas, has it? And we are now in April, if you hadn’t noticed. So if I were you I’d get used to the idea of some of us doing things you lot wouldn’t approve of us doing in peacetime.’

  ‘Us lot being?’

  ‘Men, dear,’ Maude replied tartly. ‘As if you didn’t know. Now don’t you think you had better go out and shake your fake gun at someone? If there’s an invasion we are going to ne
ed every fake marksman around.’

  She stared at Lionel. He suddenly seemed much older. Not capable of frightening her, let alone a Nazi. Oh well, they could only hope that it would not come to that.

  ‘I told you it’d be fun,’ Virginia said to Mattie as they walked in the pitch darkness back towards the village. ‘And I told you he was a good kisser.’

  ‘I thought he was meant to be teaching us to drive, not to kiss.’ Mattie raised her eyes to heaven, thinking of Peter.

  ‘Think how useful it will be to be able to kiss and drive.’

  ‘He was quite forward though. Wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Because he kissed me?’

  ‘Because he seems to try to kiss everyone.’

  ‘Whoops—’ Virginia stopped as she bumped into something – or somebody – in the darkness. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Do you always apologise to pillar boxes?’

  ‘Was that what I just bumped into?’ Virginia peered at the shape of the object now behind her. ‘I could swear it was moving.’

  ‘Are you really thinking of joining the WRACs, Virginia? I mean really?’

  ‘I’ve got this thing about being in uniform. I see myself driving this super staff car, with a general or someone like that in the back. Blast! Oh, blast and dammit!’

  ‘Whatever is the matter now?’

  ‘I only walked straight into a blinking lamp post, that’s all. I think I’ve broken my nose.’

  Having located her troubled friend, Mattie fumbled in her pocket for her Swan Vestas. ‘We should have brought a torch with us.’

  ‘Underwoods have run out of number eight batteries,’ Virginia replied, through the hankie she now held to her nose. ‘God, this hurts. Anyway, we’re not meant to use torches.’

  ‘Yes we are. Long as you point it downwards, and put tissue paper in front of the bulb—’

  ‘As if enemy aeroplanes are going to spot some feeble little pocket torch.’

  ‘Crikey!’ Mattie examined Virginia’s nose by the light of the match. ‘You look as if you’ve been in a boxing match.’

  ‘I feel as if I have.’

  ‘Is it broken?’

  ‘No, course not. Come on.’

  ‘What’s the big rush?’ Mattie’s match had long gone out as she trailed behind Virginia, who had hurried ahead in the darkness.

  ‘I’d rather not hang about, Mattie! I think someone’s following us! Listen!’

  Mattie tried to listen without stopping. ‘I can’t hear anything!’

  ‘Listen!’

  The two young women both stopped together, colliding with each other as they did so.

  ‘Can’t you hear it? Listen?’

  Now Mattie could hear their pursuer all right. It seemed they were being followed by someone who preferred to make up his ground in a series of quick rushing steps rather than a steady, heavy tread. Which somehow only served to make their pursuit even more frightening.

  ‘Quickly!’ Virginia urged, grabbing Mattie by her coat sleeve. ‘We’ll have to make a run for it!’

  The two of them began to run, stumbling along in the darkness, somehow miraculously staying on their feet for the next fifty yards or so until Mattie fell off the verge into the small ditch that ran alongside, pulling her friend with her.

  ‘Help!’ Virginia screamed as she tripped on top of Mattie. ‘Please, someone help us – please!’

  Both of them screamed as the noise of their pursuer increased, if anything sounding even louder.

  ‘It’s all right, Virginia!’ Mattie yelled over her still screaming companion. ‘It’s only an old box!’

  ‘What a sight,’ Maude sighed as she shut the front door behind her daughter. ‘What have you been up to, Mattie? You’d better not let your father see you like this. And you’re very late.’

  ‘It’s a wonder I’m home at all, Ma. We couldn’t see a thing – not a thing. And then we thought we were being followed – I mean this blackout thing is spooky.’

  ‘Not as spooky as it will be if the Germans invade. Better safe than sorry. Now come on into the library and we’ll steal some of your father’s gin. And compare notes on our driving skills.’

  Mother and daughter found their way across the hall and along the corridor with the help of a couple of lit candle stubs, the only post-curfew lights allowed in the house by the ever-vigilant Lionel, settling themselves around the remains of a fire to sip gins and orange while recounting their progress.

  ‘You know your father still doesn’t approve. Of either of us driving, I mean. And more so than ever if you ask me.’

  ‘Makes me even more determined. We must be doing the right thing, Ma.’

  ‘Oh, I know exactly what you mean, dear. If he did approve of something it would have to be something safe – like knitting. Or sending food parcels. Not that there’s anything wrong in knitting or making up food parcels, Mathilda—’

  ‘It’s all right, I know what you mean, Ma. But safety hasn’t anything to do with anything now, has it? Not now.’

  ‘No, and just because we’re meant to be the weaker sex doesn’t mean we have to sit at home twiddling our thumbs. Besides, your grandmother used to say that if men had to have babies the human race would have stopped long before Adam.’

  Mathilda looked at her mother across the table in the candlelight, and seeing the look in her eyes and the smile on her lips all at once realised how little she knew the woman who had given birth to her.

  ‘You know how dangerous it is, what we all want to do, Ma? I mean really, it is dangerous, joining up, learning to drive – it is dangerous, and no quarter given.’

  ‘I have learned that there is something far, far worse than danger, Mattie.’

  ‘And that is?’

  ‘Boredom,’ said her mother crisply. ‘To be bored with yourself worst of all – it means you can’t even taste your food—’

  Maude stopped mid-sentence as overhead the sky was suddenly filled with the droning noise of heavy-engined aircraft.

  ‘No siren,’ Mathilda said. ‘At least not yet. Must be ours.’

  ‘I love the sound of aircraft. Or rather I used to,’ Maude said, reaching for her comforting and much appreciated packet of John Players. ‘Now they give me the shivers.’

  Mathilda unscrewed the top of the green gin bottle and poured another two drinks.

  ‘God save the King,’ she proposed, getting to her feet.

  ‘Absolutely,’ her mother agreed, also rising. ‘And death to his enemies.’

  They held their glasses aloft, as if toasting the skies, then downed their drinks in one. Mattie stared over her glass for a second at her mother. She did not know why, but since war was declared – what, seven months ago, something like that – not only had their lives changed, but they had all changed, most of all her mother. There was a new light in her eye, a new spring in her step. She looked younger. It was almost shocking.

  Chapter Seven

  Six weeks later the small and normally quiet harbour of Bexham was alive with activity. Everywhere it seemed people were readying boats, crafts of all shapes and sizes. Press-ganged into service by their elders and betters, village boys ran full pelt along the waterfront with empty jerry cans to be filled to spilling at the fuel pump that stood at the head of the quay, while a stream of flat-footed girls with sacks of provisions slung over their shoulders stumbled along in the opposite direction towards the boats bobbing on the water, some with their engines already running, others with last-minute adjustments being made to their mechanics by their crews.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Mickey asked Rusty, catching up with her as she ran towards the grocer’s shop next to the pub. ‘Mum said something about some of our soldiers bein’ stranded like—’

  ‘That’s what the rumour is, Mickey!’ Rusty replied over her shoulder. ‘Now if you want to make yourself useful—’

  ‘I do! What can I do?’

  ‘They could use some more help up at the store!’

  ‘Provisionin�
�! Which was where I was headin’! Unless you’d rather do the fuellin’!’

  ‘What a madhouse,’ old Dan said, from his permanent seat on the capstan. ‘Madder even than Regatta Day.’

  ‘They want every possible boat,’ Rusty gasped, pausing to draw breath, having despatched her brother to help pack up provisions. ‘We been told to get every boat possible on the water.’

  ‘’At’s what I ’eard on the wireless, din’t I?’ Dan replied, filling his old briar pipe with dark shag. ‘Anyone and everyone what can sail a boat must go, they says. Our army is stranded, we must get our boys home, and that. God bless ’em.’

  Rusty stopped paying attention, having just caught sight of David Kinnersley jumping down off the quay on to the deck of his blue and white yacht. At once she ducked out of his sight, hoping he had not seen her, for if the rumours were true and things were as bad as they said they were the other side of the Channel, then Rusty had no intention of remaining at home twiddling the knobs on the wireless and scraping carrots for her mother – although at this particular moment she had only the vaguest idea of how she could be useful.

  Since the majority of the young men in the village had either been called up or volunteered, Rusty knew there was going to be a shortage of able sea hands, as surely as she knew that no one would entertain the thought of a girl’s helping to man a boat cross-Channel. Women were only being required to help victual and fuel up the boats. Experienced though she might be at sea, and as good a sailor as any she could think of, she knew that, being a girl, no one would want her on board his vessel.

  ‘Rusty!’ Mickey yelled to her down the quay. ‘Come and give us a hand with these boxes, will you?’

  She hurried to where Mickey was struggling with a couple of cardboard boxes, one under each arm. Rescuing some of the small packets and tins of groceries that were already spilling on to the quay, Rusty took one box from him and asked which boat they were intended for.

  ‘One’s for Mr Marcus, and one for Mr Kinnersley. This one.’

  ‘I’ll take him his. Then I have to run an errand for someone, so if anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be back later!’