The Chestnut Tree

by Charlotte Bingham

  But now, after all that, and just when he thought things might be about to come right, here was Miss Meggie demanding a razor off him.

  ‘It’s all right, I’ll be careful to wipe the blade, Richards, I promise,’ Meggie said, trying to reassure him.

  Richards nodded, handing it to her, and at the same time glancing round for Gwen, who, over on an afternoon visit from Shelborne, had already zipped upstairs to remove the key from the bathroom door.

  Goodness, what a thing it was, to be so nervous about Miss Meggie, but such had been her depression, her blackness, her inability to really respond to anyone who visited, their mutual concern for her was so great, they just could not risk anything untoward, especially not now they were getting a bit of colour into her cheeks, and a bit of food down her.

  Minutes later into the bathroom went Miss Meggie with Richards’s razor, and at such a strange hour – half past two in the afternoon, just after luncheon, when you really would expect her to be setting out with him for a walk to the shore.

  ‘Water running!’ Richards nodded from outside the bathroom where he was stationed looking back at Gwen who was pretending to be dusting.

  ‘Singing!’

  ‘The sound of singing’s not exactly what you would expect from a potential suicide, is it?’ Gwen whispered, to cheer Richards up.

  A few minutes, the sound of water swishing, and more singing.

  ‘Not heard anything like that since she got home, have you?’

  ‘No – that at least is true.’

  Finally the door opened again, and Miss Meggie’s voice coming with its opening flooded Richards with relief, there was no other expression for it.

  ‘It’s all right, Richards, I haven’t loused the blade up, at least I don’t think so, but really – precious though your razor blade is, I know – I could not put up with French lady’s armpits one more minute!’

  Richards blushed practically purple. Typical of Miss Meggie to be standing there in nothing but her bath towel, lifting her arms up to show himself and poor Gwen her impeccable clean-shaven armpits.

  ‘Miss Meggie!’ he exclaimed, for once truly shocked by her.

  ‘Well, I know, Richards. Quite. But, I mean to say, of all the things one does for one’s country, that was quite the worst! And I mean to say, I can’t wear an evening dress with armpits like that, can I?’

  From that moment on, Richards and Meggie seemed able to talk to each other as they had in the old days. It was as if, with the removal of the final, physical vestiges of ‘Martine’, Meggie could now set her sights on the future, put behind her the long and often terrifying journey she had taken across Germany from Cologne, until she had finally caught up with the Allied army and returned home to England, two stone lighter, older and still unable to quite believe that they had, actually, won, that the war was over. Cologne, Heinrich, his terrifying sister, the Nazis, the Gestapo, they were all over. Not in ‘pending’, not about to happen all over again, but quite gone, and with them her youth.

  ‘You don’t really want to stay on at Cuckers, now Madame Gran has gone, do you, Richards?’

  Richards looked first awkward and then relieved.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to stay on at Cucklington House, Miss Meggie, it’s just that Gwen and I – well, we were thinking of setting up in business together, taking over the Leaping Hare on the other side of the harbour. That’s what we were considering. Light meals and refreshments, that sort of thing. Gwen is a good cook, and has no wish to be married, but she would appreciate a change. She’s spoken to Mrs Tate, and she was very amenable. Fresh fields and pastures new, that sort of thing.’

  Meggie nodded, all understanding.

  ‘Of course, Richards. I shall be very sad not to see you at Cuckers, but it’s only right that you and Gwen should want a change. Goodness, you’ve been in Bexham all the war, and that is a long time.’

  ‘And you, Miss Meggie?’ Richards asked, trying not to look relieved. ‘What would your plans be?’

  ‘To live here, at Cuckers, which as you know Madame Gran left me, and to let Brook Street. The lease is up in a few years anyway, but I have no stomach for cities any more, Richards. Not any city, not even London, much as I love it, or did. With this in mind I shall go up to London on the train on Tuesday, stay the night at Brook Street, make sure that everything is as it should be for the new tenant, and come back on Wednesday morning.’

  ‘Will you require any packing done, Miss Meggie?’

  Meggie nodded. ‘Yes, if you wouldn’t mind packing my night things for me, Richards – oh, and my pale green silk evening gown.’

  ‘Shall I put out Madame Gran’s emeralds to wear with it?’

  ‘No, thank you, Richards. I was not – I will not be wearing Madame Gran’s emeralds on Tuesday evening, just my string of pearls, and my pearl bracelet. That is all.’

  Meggie lit a cigarette. Burlington Arcade, the sound of their laughter, walking through the streets that had seemed to be teeming with quietly frightened people, making love at his house in Cheyne Walk, it would all come back, and leave no room for the intervening years. All that surviving had taken it out of her, all that living a lie, pretending to be someone else, all that hiding from the memory of turning Davey down. Surely it would all go, once she had replaced it with those other, happier memories.

  ‘Good evening,’ the head waiter looked down the list of names on the entries, ‘Mrs – Mrs . . .’

  ‘No, it’s Miss, Miss Gore-Stewart.’

  ‘Table number six, of course.’

  The man, dark, Italianate, his expression oddly sympathetic to a beautiful young woman, dressed in a stunning silk dress, dining alone, led the way to the appropriate table.

  He pulled a chair out for Meggie and she sat down. Alas, her silver cigarette case and lighter had long ago been lost in the war, somewhere, somehow; instead she placed Madame Gran’s ornate gold cigarette case and slim gold lighter beside her plate.

  ‘Champagne, please, for one.’

  ‘Of course, madame.’

  ‘Mademoiselle.’

  She knew that they would have drunk champagne, to celebrate the end of the war. She tried to shut out the noise of the other diners as she remembered his voice, so clear, so vibrant, and imagined how their conversation would run. Davey was always joking but never facetious, not like Meggie. Meggie had always been determinedly facetious, not wanting to commit herself, taking note of Madame Gran’s warning of what wars did to people, putting their so great love for each other into ‘pending’.

  What a fool she had been, a stupid, stupid fool, not realising that love had to be caught in your hands, clasped tightly, held to you, before it went away and the bombs came, and death, and sorrow and horror, and innocent people of all kinds were killed or maimed.

  A waiter came to her table and removed the second place setting. She watched him, not really registering his presence, trying to think, trying to arrive at the right choice. What the devil would they have danced to – not ‘In The Mood’ – no, something more romantic, perhaps. She summoned a waiter.

  ‘Ask the band to play this, would you?’ Meggie scribbled the name of her chosen song on a piece of paper.

  Some few minutes later, as she sipped at her champagne and stared ahead of her, the strains of her chosen song floated across the dance floor to table six where one beautiful young woman, in a green silk evening dress, sat smoking and drinking while new and different young men took new and different young women in their arms, holding them close as they circled the floor, and she sat watching them, trying to imagine what it might be like to be dancing with them, Davey holding her in his arms, trying to imagine what it would be like if she was not quite alone.

  Report from the Sussex Argus

  THE MEN RETURN!

  With the men returning from the war Sussex housewives everywhere are only too happy to return to home and hearth. After the deprivations of the war there is no doubt that the joys of the kitchen beckon. No mor
e twelve-hour shifts in factories, or any of the other work that was so vital in war. The men are back and ready and willing to fill the jobs previously occupied by women, and the women are only too thankful to return to the kitchen and their making do and mending, to their knitting and sewing and all the other homely crafts that they have been forced to abandon on account of Hitler and his Nazis.

  However, true though we know this to be, we did find some dissenting voices.

  ‘Personally I shall miss my years as a ticket inspector on the railway,’ Lady Melton of Upper Street, Bexham, told our reporter. ‘As a child I was never allowed to play with my brother’s trains, and being employed on the railways has been a dream come true. If I am ever called upon again, I shall not hesitate to volunteer. It was the most exciting time of my life, and although I am afraid the admiral is not happy when I tell him this, it is the truth. The admiral meanwhile has learned how to cook an omelette, really quite well, so it all goes to show.’

  Of course not everyone feels like Lady Melton. Many are only too glad to get back to their jam making and their kitchens. With this in mind please turn to page six for a new recipe for Turnip and Rhubarb Jam and to page seven for ‘Pleasurable Pinnies’, a special feature on glamorous aprons for the clever, fashion-conscious housewife. Shoulder frills are going to be all the rage, we hear.

  By our reporter.

  Since she had been living alone, Judy’s very private and solitary life had become all too firmly based on an imaginary one. She knew it had lately been taking too great a hold on her, becoming too real. She could not have said why, but with summer come, and the fields behind Owl Cottage turning a wonderful golden colour, with the pathway that passed the cottage becoming almost impassable beneath the proliferation of wild flowers and humming bees, she did not care.

  Anyone seeing her setting the little oak table for two, making supper for two, talking to Walter’s photograph as if it was himself come back to her, would undoubtedly have her taken away in a plain van.

  ‘And quite right too!’ she told Walter’s photograph, blowing it a kiss.

  Living alone again, after the cramped conditions of sharing during the war, was such bliss that she had become quite ashamed of her unadulterated joy in the space that she now had to herself. No one to worry about, just herself. No one to think about, just herself. With Loopy and Dauncy returning to Shelborne, peace had brought with it a sudden oasis, but not a void. A temporary halting of everything, during which Walter and only Walter filled her every waking thought, and many of her dreams too. Walter dancing, Walter laughing, Walter making love, Walter teasing her, Walter singing.

  She turned and went to fetch the salad that she had carefully made for two. How ridiculous. She had become so obsessed with her fantasies, her imaginary life, for a second she thought she could actually hear Walter singing, instead of just imagining it.

  And yet.

  She stopped.

  She could definitely hear a voice coming from the path that ran down the side of the field. A voice singing what Hugh always said had been the young boy’s favourite song from Gilbert and Sullivan.

  The song was coming nearer and nearer. Judy sighed to herself as she crossed to the wireless that she always played during meal times to cover the silence of being quite alone. Perhaps the singer was a labourer returning home. It suddenly seemed hard that the voice should sound so like Walter singing his childhood favourite from HMS Pinafore.

  ‘We sail the ocean blue, and our saucy ship’s a beauty . . .’

  The voice came nearer and nearer still, until, just as she was about to turn up the wireless to drown out the memories of those happy days before the war, it seemed to be filling the small back garden, and it was definitely not a labourer. It was the strong voice of a real man coming towards the little French windows of the cottage, coming nearer, and nearer.

  Judy’s already large brown eyes grew larger and larger until she felt that they must have filled her face, because, of a sudden, there it seemed was Walter. And yet it was not Walter either, certainly not as he had been in her lonely dreams and fantasies. This was a broader brown-faced Walter, looking just like a Norwegian sailor in one of those thick navy blue sweaters made of rough, tough, scratchy wool, a black cap on his bonny head, a duffel bag slung on one shoulder.

  Judy tried to speak and failed, she tried to walk towards what part of her still thought might be just another of her imaginings, but somehow her feet would not do as she wished. It was only when he reached out and took her in his arms that, feeling only half conscious although wholly alive, she realised that the impossible had happened, that somehow Walter had come back to her. Walter was alive, and holding her in his arms, and they were both laughing and crying at the same time, and kissing, and kissing . . . more kissing than even Judy’s dreams had been able to conjure.

  Report from the Sussex Argus

  MISSING NOW FOUND!

  A midsummer shock for the Tate family of Shelborne, Harbour Road, Bexham. Imagine their joyful amazement when their second son Lieutenant Commander Walter Tate, missing believed lost, returned to the bosom of his family last week. Rescued off the coast of Norway where his submarine had sunk, Lieutenant Commander Tate was hidden by the Norwegian Resistance in the mountains, and subsequently worked with them for the rest of the war. Unable to get a message to his wife and family he determined to surprise his wife, Judy, at their home, Owl Cottage, Back Lane, Bexham. Walter’s father, Hugh Tate, who has been a resident of Bexham since 1922, told our reporter, ‘There is much joy in that household, as you can well imagine. There will be a family celebration at the weekend when Major John Tate will be home on leave.’

  By our reporter.

  Epilogue

  From a speech by Clement Attlee – September 1942

  ‘The work women are performing in munitions factories has to be seen to be believed. Precision engineering jobs that would make a skilled turner’s hair stand on end are performed with dead accuracy by girls who had no [previous] industrial experience.’

  The output in munition production went up from one and a quarter million at the start of the war to eight and a half million by 1943. Forty per cent of this workforce were women. In engineering 35 per cent were women. In chemicals and explosives, the most dangerous type of factory work, women were invaluable, making up 52 per cent of the workforce. Royal Ordnance factory workers at times totalled a female workforce of 80 to 90 per cent.