The Chestnut Tree

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘That’s one life down, eight to go, Bad Man,’ she said, sending David a message up to the heavens, and God a silent thanks, because interesting as being shot might have been, it would mean that she would not be able to meet up with ‘les chaps’ as she called her two commandos.

  Later she sat in the corner of a downstairs room in her supposedly safe house, which she had found with surprising ease. There seemed to be no one about in the tiny village, other than one very old man asleep at a table outside what Meggie supposed to be the only café-bar in the place and an equally old woman tending her vegetable garden to the side of a small paintwashed cottage. The old man had remained fast asleep as Meggie had sidled her way towards the red brick house with the white picket gate, and the old woman had had her back turned to her, and since the entrance to the house was at the back of the building and out of sight of the old woman Meggie had every reason to believe they were ignorant of her presence as she explored the deserted house.

  Now as she waited, seated on a pile of old newspapers in a dark corner of a bare room, she realised that she had to decide on her next move. Getting up, she crossed to the window to consult the small but well detailed map of the region that she carried in the lining of her mackintosh overcoat, and outlined what she could only guess to be the best route to the pickup point, having been robbed of her promised guide. But her study of the map also made her realise what a difficult if not impossible journey it would be to make in daylight, particularly if what the German officer had told her was true, and the area was crawling with enemy patrols. There seemed to be plenty of cover in the way of woods and farms on the way to the coast, but there were too many roads that had to be crossed and no apparent way of avoiding them, not if she was to take the quickest route. Meggie knew the ropes too well by now; five minutes the wrong side of the right time at the appointed rendezvous and the rowing boat coming in to pick up her party off the beach would be gone – that is, if the two soldiers in her charge were still alive.

  None the less she felt it her duty to try to make the rendezvous in case the commandos had indeed survived, either injured or uninjured. Since she was alive and in one piece, Meggie felt that she should not write her responsibilities off until she knew the exact state of play, which meant she had to make it to the appointed beach.

  But risking her life unnecessarily could prove to be counter-productive. Even if the commandos had escaped unscathed from the German hunting party, since Meggie had become detached from them, they would have to find their own way to the beach. If they did manage to do so, then their instructions were to hide until the rowing boat arrived to pick them up and carry them back to the waiting rescue craft.

  Searching for a cigarette, she found she had one half-smoked stub left. Carefully turning away from the window, she lit the stub and sat herself down once more with her back to the brown-painted wall. As she relished the last of her smokes Meggie allowed her thoughts to drift back to her pre-war life in London. She saw herself dancing at the Savoy with David, dressed in her favourite green silk evening dress. So immersed did Meggie become in this gorgeous memory that she did not observe the two men creeping up to the window behind her.

  Rusty found that she had to report for duty at the balloon-making factory at six forty-five p.m., prompt. Once she had been kitted out with her uniform and scarf and all that, the factory fore-woman told her that in future she need only report at ten past seven, which since it was quite a walk from her digs in the town to the factory was a bit of a relief. What was not a relief was the realisation that she, and everyone else of course, was expected to put in a twelve hour shift. It seemed it was the only way if they were to keep up production.

  The first thing that struck her amidships as she started to cross the factory floor, following the young woman in whose charge she had been put, was the noise. For a girl brought up in Bexham, used to sailing for hours on end all alone, the racket was almost unbearable.

  Noise, noise, noise, and noise of such intensity that it seemed to Rusty that she would not be able to bear it for one hour, let alone twelve. Indeed, despite passing her medical the previous week with flying colours, she even thought she might be going to pass out, and that was before she settled to the work, the so-vital work. Stitching, stitching, stitching. Rusty of all people stitching, Rusty who had always made fun of women who liked to knit and sew and such like, wanting only to run out of the house and sail her boat, run about on the beach, fish and swim, wanting nothing to do with womanly crafts.

  ‘Rusty! I say, Rusty Todd! Here, stop! No, stop. Rusty Todd!’

  Rusty had just begun her break and was sipping the precious, permitted hot drink from her Thermos flask when she heard the voice calling her name. She stared around her, her head already throbbing to such a degree that she thought that had she been in her boat, she would have been able to use it as an outboard motor.

  The lavatories nearby were filled with women going in and out, but the young woman who had shouted her name was still discernible, coming towards her at a rate of knots. The scarf knotted on top of her head in the accepted wartime manner at first made her unrecognisable, but as Rusty stared at the face, bit by little bit, it became quite clear who it was.

  ‘Virginia Morrison!’

  ‘Yes. You remember me then, Mattie Eastcott’s friend?’

  ‘Course I remember you.’

  ‘Well then. God, I can’t tell you how glad I am to see someone else from Bexham. Really I am. I never thought I’d be blasted homesick living twenty miles from the village. God, it is so good to see you. But, Rusty, I mean to say.’ She gave Rusty a curious look. ‘What made you come here? I thought someone like you, you’d have joined the Wrens.’

  ‘Partly money, partly Dad, partly Mickey, our youngest who we think’s gone for a soldier and lied about his age, though we don’t dare tell Father. And – you know – if I joined the Wrens, I’d hardly ever get home, so that was out. But I needed to get away from my desk job. Anyone can sit behind a desk, but here,’ she nodded back towards the still terrible noise, ‘well, we’re really needed here, making barrage balloons, and that. It’s like Mother says, it’s women’s work, this sort of stuff. We’ve got the hands for it, we’ve got the patience, we can do the job better than the men, and quicker.’

  ‘Rusty. Look. Tell you what, why not come back to my lodgings with me when we finish here? Mrs Grady won’t mind, she’s Irish and kind, and you can stay with her, I’m sure. That will make it so nice when we go dancing, coming back together in the blackout, not on our own being chased by something that turns out to be an old box, which is what happened once to Mattie and me.’

  ‘But I’m putting up at Mrs Blacker’s—’

  ‘Not any more you’re not. We’ll call by and explain. She won’t mind. For every bed that’s let at Mrs Blacker’s there’s another five hundred from the factory queuing up to take your place. No, you’ve got to come to Mrs Grady, be with me. You’ll like Mrs Grady, she makes Irish stew that would curl your hair, and I don’t mean in a good way, and has beds with lumps in them, and when you taste her tea and dried cake with cocoa filling and listen to her singing you’ll wish you were back on your twelve-hour shift. See you later, eh?’

  Virginia laughed, and was gone, back to the unbearable noise, the endless work, the sweat of it all. Virginia of all people who before the war, as Rusty well knew, seemed only to be interested in men and going to the films.

  ‘Why do you stay there then, if it’s that bad?’ Rusty wanted to know, following Virginia out of the factory door into the grim darkness of the blackout when they finally finished their shift.

  ‘Take my arm.’ Virginia took hold of Rusty’s hand and tucked it into her elbow as they walked uncertainly away from the factory towards the town. ‘I stay there because when we have our two days off Mrs Grady, like the good Catholic woman that she is, turns a blind eye, and a blind ear, to what time we get in. That is why I stay there. How’s your jitterbugging? No, don’t tell me. Knowing y
ou, you can’t?’

  Rusty remained silent, feeling absurdly dull and old-fashioned.

  ‘Well, that’s something we’ll have to get down to the moment we get to old Ma Grady’s house. The jitterbug is not just the only dance to dance, it is the only dance that anyone under thirty is dancing. You have to learn or quite simply you will end up as a blooming old wallflower, and we can’t have that.’

  Rusty clung to Virginia’s arm, following her along the very narrow path that led past the railway, past waste ground, to the town.

  ‘Watch out you don’t stamp on anyone’s head, or trip on their underwear. This stretch is usually more crowded than the London Underground at night. But still, a girl’s got to earn her nylon stockings somehow, hasn’t she?’

  Listening to Virginia’s chatter, for a second Rusty found herself wishing against wish that she was back reading Tom Sawyer to her father. She had been frightened that she might be going to be out of her depth the moment she entered the factory. To a girl brought up as she had been to independence and quiet, to sailing with only the sound of the wind, to the cheerful hum of village life that eventually dropped to silence as night came, it had become immediately apparent that, however much she had boasted to her father that she could put up with any kind of war work, she was not going to fit in at the factory. But now that Virginia was going on about nylon stockings and such like – well, she really did know that she was out of her depth, and well and truly so. Just because she lived in Bexham did not mean that she was entirely innocent, but on the other hand going out with men who gave you nylon stockings in return for favours was not something she had planned to do with her life. She thought of David Kinnersley and Dunkirk, of Mickey, wherever he was, and felt desperately homesick. Why had there to be a war? Without a war Tom would be alive, and she would be sailing with him, going out to deep sea fish together, and Mickey would be going into the village bakery which was owned by a family friend and bicycling back with hot loaves from the last baking of the day; and her father would still be all right in his mind, not seated in front of the fire staring ahead of him, useless to everyone.

  ‘Fer chrissakes! Do you mind!’ A male American voice seemed, of a sudden, to detonate in front of Virginia in the darkness.

  ‘So sorry, so sorry, so sorry, madam – oh – I mean, yes, so awfully sorry.’

  Despite the fracas, and the fact that there might be other bodies hiding in the shadows, Virginia carried on, pulling Rusty behind her, until at long last they reached the main road that led to the town, upon which she burst into fits of laughter.

  ‘I told you, I told you!’ She caught Rusty by the hand and continued to laugh as they ran. ‘Oh dear, that is so funny! What did I tell you? That was only Mrs Grady earning her nylons with a GI!’

  ‘Martine!’

  Meggie had hardly been able to believe her eyes; as well she might not. There, alive and well, and looking as relaxed as anyone who had just spent several hours evading German soldiers in Normandy could look, were her two commandos. And shortly after, there was their rescue boat, coming silently into thankfully still waters. And after that, England, and debriefing, and all that, but not, for some reason she simply could not understand, peace, as in peace of mind. For Meggie, after only one drop, was now hooked on an immensely heady drug, and, although she did not yet realise it, one that once it had you in its power was, as with so many drugs, almost impossible to shake.

  Once she returned to Bexham, and Richards’s relieved welcome, she took care not to let him know that she was intent on returning to France, to do it all over again.

  ‘Champagne, Miss Meggie. Been saving this for you, for your safe return. Vintage too, thought you would like that.’

  ‘Thanks, Richards. Happy landings, eh?’

  ‘So. Back home for good, now?’

  Meggie stared past Richards, neither willing nor able to answer his question. How could she tell him about the thrill she felt at actually doing something dangerous and brave, how when your blood was up you found that being so-called courageous was nothing of the sort, it was exciting, dashing, daring, spine-chillingly fascinating; it heightened everything and lowered nothing? She was determined to go to France, again and again and again, and each time she went, each time she inflicted damage on the Nazis, she was doing her bit to avenge Davey, and everyone else for that matter. Victory at any price was what was wanted; anything else was unthinkable. Line after line of agents had already been tortured and shot, and if she was to be one of them, well, that was how it had to be, but until then she could not wait to get back.

  Meggie looked across at Richards, the expression in her brilliant blue eyes opaque, unfathomable to anyone who did not know her.

  As it was, Richards did know her, had known her since she was a tiny waif-like figure who had been deposited on Madame Gran at a moment’s notice. Knowing not just her, but her grandmother, the butler felt a chill run through him as he saw the expression in Meggie’s eyes. He knew that look. It was exactly the same look as Madame Gran used to have, and it always and inevitably signalled dangerous times ahead.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Within a few days of his wife’s heroic death Lionel Eastcott was insisting on going out on fire watching duties again, and carrying on as normal. As an active member of the Home Guard, he was determined to carry on his life as it had been before Maude had been so tragically killed. And to his friends’ and comrades’ astonishment, and even admiration, he had managed to do just that. If when he appeared for his duties as usual he looked a little dishevelled, where before he had presented, courtesy of Maude, an entirely neat appearance, if his shirts were grubbier and his suits not pressed as they used to be, that was, they all quietly reasoned, only to be expected.

  What his friends could not witness, however, what Lionel was at pains to keep from them, was the depth of the guilt he felt now that Maude was no longer there.

  He found that not only had he come, far too late, to appreciate everything she had done for him, he had come to appreciate everything he had not done for her. When had he ever thanked her for fetching his suits from the cleaners? When had he ever appreciated her kitchen battles with Cook and the maids before the war, battles that had resulted in the good plain cooking that Lionel enjoyed? When had he ever brought her home a bunch of flowers unexpectedly, or offered to drop her at the hairdresser’s? When he was not fire watching, or helping out as a volunteer at the hospital, when he was not doing his Home Guard duties, the answer came to Lionel over and over again – never. He had never ever, not once, appreciated what Maude had meant to him.

  Worse than that he had scorned her. He had made fun of her to Mattie and her friend Virginia. He had made jokes about women like Maude at the golf club, he had even rolled his eyes behind her back at the maids to make them laugh at her, conveying the impression that instead of being worthy of their respect, their mistress was in fact, in his eyes, a stupid woman. He had made fun of her driving lessons, and then, too, he had mocked her joining the WVS, pointing out, over and over, that the WVS would take just about anyone.

  All this had run through his mind, time and time again, but never more so than now as he waited for Mattie to arrive for a rare visit to Bexham. Now that Maude was gone he knew that every time Mattie looked at him it would be with Maude’s eyes, that if she laughed he would remember her mother laughing. The evening when Maude had begged him to dance with her came back to him now, as he dusted the records near Maude’s favourite little gramophone, a gramophone that he always used to turn off whenever he came back into the room, preferring to listen to the sound of his own voice rather than one of Maude’s records.

  He stared round the sitting room. Try as he would he had not been able to make it look as it had when Maude was alive. He had attempted to arrange a few wild flowers in a vase on the table that always stood ready and waiting by the couch, but he realised now that they looked stupid – silly even. He had pulled the curtains about, trying to arrange them in their usual co
nfines, tied neatly with silken ties, but his bows looked crooked and untidy, and the curtains the same. The cushions too on the sofa, he tried to remember how Maude had always put them. He thought she always put them not straight as he had done, but crooked, or was it straight not crooked? Now he could not even remember that. A lump came into his throat as he pulled the sitting room door shut behind him.

  Mattie would be sure to laugh at his housekeeping the way he used to laugh at Maude, and with good reason. He was useless, as useless as he used to think that Maude was, his beloved Maude, who had died so bravely, in a way that he would never have believed possible of her. Maude, who had seemed only to love to dance, to drink martinis, to listen to the wireless, had run into a burning building to rescue someone else’s family, and then against all advice she had gone back, even after she had rescued them, to search for more possible survivors, whereupon the building had collapsed on her.

  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, Lionel imagined that he could hear Maude laughing at him. Perhaps saying, Finding the going tough on your own, Lionel? Or again, Didn’t think I was capable of anything much, did you, Lionel, but finally I have proved you wrong.

  Again, this morning, as he hovered about the kitchen checking his list of what to do and ticking off the various items, Lionel tried not to imagine, if Maude was watching him, how she would laugh at his attempts to put together a good and welcoming wartime Sunday lunch for Mattie. Since it was Mattie’s birthday, he had even tried to make a birthday cake.

  He had been able to do this because Mabel Constanduros, the famous wireless cook, had, only the week before, dictated a make-do wartime cake recipe out of flour, syrup and powdered ginger. Not content with this sortie into higher cuisine, Lionel was also proud to be able to serve chocolate buns for pudding; buns made by one of his Home Guard friends from wartime ingredients. Lionel had already tasted one. It was delicious, although he had no idea whether it had really tasted so delicious because it was so long since he had eaten a chocolate bun, or because the recipe, apparently culled from a magazine, had been so clever in its use of its ingredients.