The Chestnut Tree

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘No, darling, we’re staying at Shelborne for the duration, I keep telling you that. What we’re doing is – we’re doing it up for Walter, in case, you know, he should need it when he’s on leave. You know, Walter’s quite an old boy now.’

  ‘What about John? John’s an old boy too.’

  ‘Oh, John’s different, he’s not thinking of settling down with anyone, at the moment, darling.’

  ‘John loves Judy.’

  Loopy turned quickly. ‘Stuff and nonsense, Dauncy Tate, John does nothing of the sort.’

  ‘He does. He loves Judy.’

  ‘No, darling, you’ve got that wrong. Walter loves Judy, and Judy loves Walter. That is why I – that is why we bought the cottage.’

  Loopy snatched at Dauncy’s ball, caught it, and, fearing that he might break a now all too precious light fitting with it, put it into her picnic holdall.

  ‘Now, come along, enough of that, and you must help me get the old paint tins from the garage out of the car. We’re going to try to get this place as fresh as new-churned butter by the time Walter comes back on leave.’

  They changed their clothes in the spider-infested bathroom, putting on old paint-bespattered togs for the task ahead of them, and, Loopy having once more plugged in her old wireless and placed a battered kettle for tea and coffee making on the old-fashioned wood-fired stove, they started to rub down the walls of the old cottage.

  ‘Does Father know we have bought this, Mother?’

  ‘Not yet, darling, he’s in London all week now, you know – at the War Office, so I didn’t want to bother him about it, not really. I told you yesterday, this is our secret, yes? Owl Cottage is our secret, just the two of us.’

  Dauncy smoothed his hands down his old painting shirt, a look of sudden pride on his face as he realised just how responsible sharing a secret with his mother made him feel.

  ‘Do you know this is the first secret I have had with you, Mother?’

  ‘Is it, darling?’

  Loopy put down her paintbrush, resting it against the side of the tin, and lit a cigarette. Paint, cigarettes, buying cottages, they were all part of peacetime; so much so that she actually felt guilty. She should not be smoking, or painting. She should be joining the WVS and escorting children on trains, or making meals for pilots when they returned from their sorties, that was what she should be doing. Or helping out with the new netting circle that Elinor Gore-Stewart had organised in place of what she now called the ‘utterly boring knitting circle’ at Cucklington House. All in all, she should be doing the things that the rest of the women in the village were busy doing. But while Walter was away at the war it seemed to Loopy that her heart was away with him; that somehow, by buying the cottage and doing it up, she was willing Walter to come home to Bexham. Willing him to come home safe to her and Hugh, John and Dauncy – but, most of all, to Judy.

  Meggie poured herself yet another stiff gin and It, lit a Black and White and took a further turn around her bedroom at Cucklington. She had heard nothing from David since the morning she had woken up in his bedroom in his house in Cheyne Walk and found him gone with just a note left for her on the pillow. Left you a kiss on your nose to be had at your leisure, the note read. Got to go off to sea for a little while – nothing serious. Dinner at the Ritz on my return. On me. Love, your Bad Man.

  The result of Davey’s note was that Meggie was in no hurry to see him again. She felt that since he had let things slide, so must she, and because of this, and for no other reason, she had decided that not only was it a bad idea for her to marry in wartime, it was a bad idea for Judy too.

  ‘But if you love someone, surely it’s only logical – to want to marry them?’

  Judy paused, staring into her own eyes in the mirror in which she was making up her face, as she remembered her night with Walter in the summer-house.

  ‘Well, of course it’s logical, but not in wartime, Judy, surely? And marrying a submariner? A submariner who joins up at the start of the war? Not exactly long odds for a marriage. I mean, girls of our generation, don’t you think we should do something; I mean other than just wait around to make brief wartime marriages? And have babies. Or not. Our first concern should be for what’s going to happen to this country, I mean isn’t it? Shouldn’t it be? I mean, think about it – we could be having babies who are going to have as brief lives as we ourselves.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’

  ‘It’s true,’ Meggie stated. ‘War is not a time to fill one’s head with silly romantic notions.’

  ‘But I thought you were all for Walter and me—’

  ‘Well, I was, but since then I’ve thought about it, and I’m not so sure. Love is fine, but marriage, well, I just don’t know, Judy. I mean really, if you think about it, we must all be mad to even contemplate it at this moment in our lives.’

  ‘Are you saying it’s unpatriotic?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am. I think we should all wait until the end of the war, you know, see which of us is left, and, if any of us are, count heads not hearts. Rather than rushing off in a flurry of romantic feelings because any minute now we might all die.’

  Judy turned from the mirror. ‘You’re just repeating what Madame Gran always says, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. And no. She only says what I believe to be right, that we must learn from what happened to the previous generation, not to marry in haste just because there is a war. More important by far that we put our shoulders to the wheel and forget about the rest, until it’s all over. You saw those poor men we escorted up to London on the train, Judy. They were shattered.’ She paused, stubbing out her cigarette before announcing, ‘Davey proposed to me, twice, in London,’ and as Judy turned but said nothing, she added, ‘but I refused him, twice. That is how strongly I feel.’

  Meggie looked over to Judy and smiled her crooked, impish smile, trying not to remember the vulnerable look on Davey’s face when he proposed to her the second time, after they had made love in his house in Cheyne Walk. Davey was the most wonderful lover, so passionate and yet so considerate. She would never regret making love with him, and yet at the same time the idea of taking some sort of advantage of him, taking him up on his marriage offer, somehow seemed awfully wrong.

  ‘Why won’t you marry me, Meggie mine? Don’t you love your Bad Man?’

  ‘You know I love my Bad Man, I’ve told you I love you with all my heart, but – be fair to yourself, Davey. You wouldn’t be proposing if there wasn’t a war on, and you know it, and I know it.’

  There had been a long silence after that, as there was a long silence now as both girls resumed brushing their hair.

  ‘Will we never hear?’ Judy finally broke the agonising silence. ‘I mean, not ever? Could it be that we will be like this for years and years and years, Meggie?’

  ‘Like what?’ Meggie asked, knowing perfectly well.

  ‘Like this, waiting and wondering, over and over, where they are, the men we love. I mean, I know I will never love anyone the way I love Walter, and you will never love anyone the way you love David, however much you try to pretend otherwise.’

  Meggie stared at Judy knowing she was right, and hating her for it.

  What seemed like hours later, hours during which they talked and pretended to read books, and then talked some more, there was a discreet knock at their bedroom door.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me, Richards. Madame Gran sent me to tell you, Miss Meggie. Light Heart’s come back—’

  Meggie ran to the door and wrenched it open. ‘Is Mr Davey back? It’s Mr Davey’s – he’s back, isn’t he?’

  But one look at Richards’s face told Meggie that Light Heart might be back, but Davey was not.

  Mrs Todd seemed to be staring not past the vicar but right through him, to something that she could see but the Reverend Hodson could not. Although her husband was still unconscious she had insisted on bringing him home. If he, like Tom, was to die, then she was determined that he would do so in h
is own bed, as he would have wished. He was suffering from a terrible blow to the head from which, but for Mr Kinnersley, he should have died. The wrong man had come back, and both she and the vicar knew it. Tom and Mr Kinnersley were both lying at the bottom of the sea somewhere near the coast of France, but nothing, not even that tragedy, could turn her into the kind of churchgoing type the reverend so clearly wished her to be.

  ‘If it is of any interest to you, Reverend, I always thought my Tom would be taken from us early, and as for poor young Mr Kinnersley, well, he was always such a daredevil, it’s amazing he lived as long as he did really.’ The expression in Mrs Todd’s eyes was resolute. ‘And kind though it is of you to stop by here, I am sure, with your words of comfort and that, there’s no need, I do assure you, no need at all. My Tom was about to start his training. See, he was the clever one. About to train to join them young men that dismantle bombs. That’s right,’ as the vicar dropped his eyes, and looked away. ‘His death, well, it’s come sooner rather than later, that’s all.’ She paused. ‘It’s funny really, because I knew from the time he was born that God only meant my Tom to be with us for a little while.’

  ‘So you do believe in God, if not in church, Mrs Todd?’ The vicar’s expression brightened.

  ‘Oh, I believe in God all right, Reverend.’ Mrs Todd glanced towards her unconscious husband as if looking for some kind of affirmation from him too. ‘I believe in God in the garden, in God in the fields, in God in the sea, but not in a church. My husband always said, my husband always says, folk like you sending off young men to fight in the Great War is what stopped the rest of us going to church. It was the vicars and the priests who blessed the guns and sent them to their death and where’s Jesus in that may I ask? Sending off young men to kill other women’s sons, that’s not what Jesus taught us to do, is it, vicar? So thank you for your kind words, but I’m best left to just be at this moment. After all, no amount of prayers will bring my Tom back, and we both know it.’

  The vicar stood up. He was a good man not unused to being sorted out by women such as Mrs Todd, and as far as he was concerned he had done his duty, offered his sympathy, and there was really no more that he could do.

  He closed the door quietly behind him and let himself out of the Todds’ brightly painted cottage. Happily the wind was blowing strongly in towards the village, making him bend his head to hold his hat, and the seagulls were crying loud and constantly overhead, so, luckily for him, he was unable to hear Mrs Todd’s sobs as he made his way along the towpath and back to the village and his church. For this reason perhaps he was able to comfort himself with the thought that Mrs Todd might come to church, eventually, perhaps to a Sunday service, or perhaps just to seek refuge there, together with the rest of the village, if there was an invasion. As it was he could do no more than he had.

  Inside the cottage Tom’s father lay where Rusty and Mickey had laid him so carefully, still breathing, but also still unconscious, shielded from the world, and – happily for him – the grief that awaited him if and when he awoke.

  His wife was in no such state, as seated by his side she stared at the only photograph she had of her little Tom, aged ten, wearing his Scouts uniform. Every now and then she held it to her as she rocked to and fro with grief, her unconscious husband beside her.

  At the cottage hospital Meggie and Judy passed down the men’s ward, Meggie’s eyes desperately searching for some sight of someone they knew who might be able to tell them if David was alive.

  But all the time they were stopping, and staring at the bandaged faces of sometimes younger and sometimes older men, all Judy could think of was Walter. No one ever got to bury a dead submariner, unless they were washed up, and even then it was unlikely that anyone would find them. Even as she stared at these other wounded men, men she did not love and only a few of whom she vaguely knew, Judy felt desperately lonely and depressed in the realisation of what she might soon have to face.

  Now that they were coming to the end of the ward, and there was no Davey, no one from Light Heart’s second rescue mission, Judy and Meggie, for no reason, both sat down suddenly and stared back down the ward, as if they could not quite believe that they had not found David, as if should they wait just a little longer they would suddenly realise that they had missed him. That he was sitting up in bed, probably with a broken arm, cuts and bruises, but very much alive and calling for a dry martini, making light of everything, raring to go back across the Channel to rescue more of the benighted British Expeditionary Force stranded on those beaches in France.

  ‘Meggie.’ Judy glanced down to where Meggie was seated, still staring vacantly down the ward, and touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Meggie. Why don’t we try the women’s ward? There might be someone there who saw him, or saw what happened? Why don’t we try there?’

  ‘I suppose we could,’ Meggie agreed, the despair never leaving her eyes.

  ‘Time for visitors to leave!’ Matron called down the ward. ‘All visitors to leave. Oh, hallo, Miss Melton,’ she went on in a gentler tone, recognising Judy. ‘I am afraid I have to ask you to leave. We’re a bit over-crowded and under-staffed, as you can see, so we will have to ask you to go now, I’m afraid.’

  Judy drew Matron aside. Edith Hargreaves was one of the old sort, strict but kind. She knew the Meltons well since Sir Arthur was one of the hospital directors.

  ‘We are leaving, Matron, it’s just that we were looking for someone. David Kinnersley. He’s been back and forwards to Dunkirk in his boat Light Heart. I expect you know him – always in the wars is David.’

  ‘Yes, of course. A bit of a regular here, especially when he was younger, was young David Kinnersley.’ Of a sudden Judy found her body turning to ice as she noticed Matron’s eyes leaving her face as, placing her hand on Judy’s arm, she walked her even further down the ward. ‘His boat did come back, Miss Melton, I know because we have one of the crew in the women’s ward, just called in for a bit of treatment for a burn – Rusty Todd. Light Heart came back, but without her skipper. I’m afraid David Kinnersley died, my dear, trying to save poor Tom Todd, Rusty’s brother. They were both killed.’ Then noticing Judy’s pallor, her expression tightened. ‘I am so sorry to have to break this news to you. Were you engaged to him, my dear? I am so awfully sorry.’

  ‘Not me, no.’ Judy looked quickly over to Meggie who, pale-faced and tense, was still seated just staring in front of her. ‘No, I was not engaged to David Kinnersley – no, Miss Gore-Stewart, just there, sitting down, she was.’

  ‘Would you like me to tell her for you? It’s sometimes easier if it is done by someone less close.’

  Judy said nothing for a few seconds, her throat tightening so hard she could not find her voice. Finally she whispered, looking across at Meggie sitting upright and white-faced on a visitor’s chair, staring in front of her, ‘I don’t think there’s any need, Matron, I think she already knows.’

  Loopy and Dauncy had found it impossible to keep their secret for very long, so, at weekends, Hugh had now joined them at the cottage, helping with the decorating and generally making himself handy, making up drinks for the workers, singing Gilbert and Sullivan at the top of his voice. Somehow the decorating, the smallness of the cottage, its cosiness, was comforting to all three of them, and Hugh, away from his desk at the War Office in London, was more than grateful for the distraction that Owl Cottage brought him.

  Like everyone else’s in Bexham, the Tates’ wireless was always turned on, waiting, forever waiting for more news of the war.

  ‘Do you think we will win?’ Dauncy gave his father his most serious look.

  ‘Of course. Just as soon as we can get your mother’s people on the other side of the Atlantic to join in, just as soon as America comes to help us, we’ll thrash the Nazis, no trouble. We must. We have to. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘We saw so much fighting in the skies yesterday I think we must be winning, don’t you, Father?’

  ‘You bet.’ Hugh nodded at his
son, determined to look casual. ‘Of course we’re winning, Dauncy.’

  ‘The machine gun fire was fantastic. And my friend Donald, he picked up a German parachute in the next door field, lucky devil.’

  Hugh paused in his painting to stare across at Dauncy for a second. At first it was almost shocking to hear his youngest son referring to what might be the end of their country in such cheerfully sporting tones, but then, remembering that the newsvendors in London were chalking up the results of the dog fights overhead like cricket scores on their bill-boards, he turned back to his painting. Then too, he realised that at Dauncy’s age he would have been exactly the same. Fascinated by war, not frightened by it, only frightened by such things as his parents selling their house, or not seeing his school chums again, that kind of thing; but the actual reality of it – death, the death of friends, or lovers, husbands, or brothers – that would have meant little to him, until or unless it happened.

  ‘Good man,’ Hugh told Dauncy admiringly. ‘Good man. I hope the pilot was not in the parachute when Donald dragged it off?’

  ‘No, he wasn’t, worse luck. Mr Gurney from the post office had already arrested him, with his pretend gun.’

  Loopy frowned over the top of Dauncy’s head, and Hugh turned off the wireless before the next news announcement. God alone knew why everyone in Bexham was so keen on listening to the news, since so little of it was good. However determinedly they all switched it on with jolly expressions, pretending to each other that they thought it was going to be cheering, it never was, it was just more of the same. The Nazis were winning, we were losing, and everyone knew it, which was why their conversations were so consciously bright, so delightfully ordinary, as if everyday tasks must be made to matter, when really everyone knew that they did not matter, as Loopy would say, ‘a hill of beans’.

  Loopy seemed to understand and approve of Hugh’s switching off the radio, because she put down her paint brush and lit a cigarette, preparatory to starting a conversation.