by Allie Burns
Theo whimpered. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Christ alive.’ The tears poured down his cheeks. His face crumpled. His nose ran.
‘What? Theo? What is it?’
‘He’s the spitting image of my mother. I’m sorry,’ Theo said. He held the baby close; his hands wrung the blanket. ‘I’m sorry for everything. I did want to marry you, and I did love you. That was all real. It was all such a tangle up here.’ He tapped the side of his head. She believed him, but there had been other lies too.
‘You asked when we first met if Mother had enough money to go around. You asked me questions about the estate; how much it was worth. Was that part of the attraction?’
He didn’t answer.
He reached out a hand from John and stroked her face. She shut her eyes. ‘I missed you,’ he whispered. ‘My wife, Mabel, we married so young. We don’t love each other and that’s as true as I’m standing here. We married because she was expecting, the war was coming, and I did the right thing in case I didn’t come back, so she could get my pension. We’ve two beautiful children to show for our trouble, but not much else. We never were happy together, properly, not like when we first met. Do you remember that? As soon as you wrote to me, I knew you were something special, that I couldn’t let you go. And look at this beauty.’
He rocked John in his arms. Mrs Tipton spied on them from the window.
‘If you’d told me the truth at the beginning …’ Even then she wouldn’t have taken another woman’s husband, or children’s father.
‘I had to go back,’ he said. ‘Face up to what I’d done. And then you wrote and told Mabel about the boy and I knew then what a shambles I’d made of everything.’
She nodded. She couldn’t argue with that.
‘He’s a beautiful baby. I’d like him to know me, to be part of his life.’ Tears ran down his face again. She took John from him while he pulled out a hankie.
‘I slept last night in the farmhouse barn,’ he said. Her spine tingled; he’d been lurking around the village all day. ‘Can I see you and the baby again?’
‘We leave tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Mrs Tipton said that there’s not been a decision on who will take over here. It was always your dream for us, wasn’t it? It still could be – we could manage it together.’
‘Percy Greenacre is a capable pair of hands. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got things to do,’ she said.
‘Sleep on it,’ he said. ‘You might feel different in the morning.’
He took her hand and rubbed the skin where her wedding ring had been. The indentation had all but gone now. She would hardly know it had been there at all.
‘Bring your ring tomorrow, meet me by the river, and I’ll know that you’re mine again,’ he said.
She went to bed amongst a shadow city of boxes. In the morning, vans would arrive ready to ferry them to London and Theo would be waiting for her.
*
Emily was the first to wake on their last day at HopBine, if she’d even been asleep at all. Thomas had called her before she went to bed, so animated with his plans for the estate, so many questions for her.
She dressed quietly so as not to wake the baby, and then gently pushed the bassinet into Mother’s room. Theo might be already down by the old mill, but he’d kept her waiting and now it was her turn.
She clambered up the old oak tree, until Joe came out the kitchen door after breakfast, and then she crossed the field and the stile down to the farmyard. Sally barked in greeting when she knocked on the kitchen door.
Mrs Tipton beckoned her into the farmhouse. The range was already going and the windows were coated in steam. Sally rested her head on her paws on the hearthrug. The two of them sat across from one another at the kitchen table.
‘What will you do with your retirement?’ Emily asked.
‘I don’t know.’ Mrs Tipton shrugged. ‘I’ll stay with my cousin for a while, down near Lenham. She says I’m to come for a rest. Something’ll turn up. Life usually works that way.’
Mrs Tipton would never ease up – she’d go mad with boredom.
‘This place is all we’ve known really,’ Mrs Tipton continued. ‘Been here since we were first wed. Lord Radford took us on back when they owned the land.’
Emily swallowed hard, trying to force the tightness in her throat away. ‘Now come on. You’ve lots to look forward to.’
Did she?
‘In time, your mother won’t need you.’
The question was, how much time? How long would it take before Mother would let her go? Mother had made tiny steps since they’d returned to HopBine and then Uncle Wilfred’s reappearance had knocked her back to where they’d started.
Mrs Tipton reached her hand across the table and squeezed Emily’s. ‘It comforts me to think that Mr Tipton might have clapped eyes on you up on the orchard before he was taken away. And that he wasn’t alone when he passed.’
‘I’m glad too,’ Emily said, dragging in a breath.
*
She searched for Theo in the cart shed behind the wain.
‘Are you there?’ she said one last time. She tutted. Why did her encounters with Theo always leave her sure that she’d dreamt him up? So much for waiting for her. He’d most likely run out on her again.
It was there, hidden in the hay, behind the wooden wheel. She ducked into the shadows, down on her haunches, cleared the straw away. Theo’s knapsack. She wasn’t too late. She pulled it out; worn, limp and insubstantial. Hardly much to show for a lifetime, nothing like the volume of belongings they’d waved goodbye to that morning. But what did any of that count for in the end? Their things weren’t what made them rich, or poor.
As she left the shed she nearly collided with him in the yard, where he cradled John in his arms.
They walked in silence, the three of them, Theo still holding on to John. Across the yard, through the orchard until they reached Sunnyside. On a few of the trees the pure-white apple blossom had been tricked into coming out early, but now the weather had turned colder again and it was caught on the branches. They cut down the track to the old paper mill and the stream.
‘I’m sorry,’ Theo said. He was unshaven. Had grime on his face. His mouth was all puckered up with regret and despair. He was nothing like the man in his photograph, the man she’d married.
‘Don’t be. It’s over with now.’
‘I’ve made some stupid mistakes. The biggest of all was lying to you. But I don’t want to keep moving, running away. I want to put things right.’
Emily smoothed her skirt beneath her and sat on a fallen trunk. This was where the water grew shallow and you could cross to the other side. They’d paddled in it as children. Feet anchored on algae-smooth stones, eyes trained on the green-hued water waiting to spear fish with sharpened branches. It’s where she’d chased after Lily, Rosie and Lolly and where Sally had saved her.
Just around the bend the sudden change was dangerous. The water deepened, picked up its pace. The babbling gave way to a gush, a slight decline in the level, and the water was sent down, past the old mill and on to the main river.
‘We could run this place together,’ Theo said, spinning to his feet and grabbing her left hand. He snatched her hands and smoothed them with his own fingertips. She was on her feet. Fell into his arms. His embrace was warm and comforting. She sunk into it and back in to Bournemouth on that cold day on the beach, when he’d slept on the floor of their hotel room.
‘I love you, Emily,’ he said. She hadn’t dreamt it. It had all been real, and those embers had kept their heat because he needed to meet John.
She dipped her head to the ground. And then she pulled inside her pocket and took out the gold band that the stranger who’d been Theo’s best man had guarded for him on their wedding day. It had passed from the stranger to Theo and Theo had given it to her. They’d been a chain of strangers who’d all since scattered to the wind.
He took the ring from her palm and held it between his forefinger and thumb. He splayed her left
hand. She was trembling like she’d been on that day in the church. Her ring finger stayed flat. She didn’t raise it taller than the others, so the ring would slip on. He wanted her help. But her hand fell out of his grip, and her fingertips closed to her palm.
He didn’t know her, he didn’t know what she’d been through, or what her family had lost.
She took the ring, put it on his palm and curled his fingers around it and then stood up from the trunk, bent to kiss him on the cheek. ‘I don’t blame you,’ she said. She lifted John from his arms and rested him on her hip. ‘But your family need you more than I do. And at least now you know where to find your boy.’
Theo kissed John on the forehead, smoothed his son’s hair. Emily shrank back as he leant in towards her. He stayed on the trunk, knees high, and lit his pipe. Puffs of the sweet aroma sickened the clean air.
As she walked back up the hill, a golden hum filled the air, and then the most delicate of splashes. The wedding ring had left barely a ripple in the stream.
*
It was so quiet, just John gurgling and birds singing in the trees. The front door was closed tight behind her and Mother sat on the front step, bouncing John on her knee. Three suitcases by her boots. One for each of them.
The delivery vans, packed with the boxes, had left to go ahead of them up to London. All that was left was the Empire and the dinner plates from which they’d eaten a cheese and ham sandwich ahead of their train.
‘There you are,’ Mother said. ‘I was beginning to worry.’
‘I’ve laid a posy of dahlias and lit a candle at the shrine,’ she told her. ‘Theo is here.’
‘I know,’ Mother said. ‘He just saw Cecil before he caught his train to Cardiff.’ There was an uprising in Wales and Cecil had been recruited by an activist group to report on it for their pamphlet. ‘Theo apologised to him. But the man’s no less a criminal because he said sorry.’
Emily tugged her suit jacket tight around her.
The hum of a car engine came along New Lane, took a breath and then continued to grow louder before it emerged at the top of the cedar avenue.
Sally had been following her around all morning. How was she ever going to say goodbye to the collie? The poor unsuspecting thing would lose two masters in quick succession.
‘I called Mr Hughes to ask for a lift,’ Mother said.
Emily stared at the Empire. It wouldn’t fit in the car. The elephant grey was scratched to white on the pram’s sides and the hood’s metal jaw was so stiff it needed greasing, but it was the only place that John would sleep or play and pushing him about the London parks had been about the only thing she was looking forward to.
‘Thomas called late last night,’ Emily told Mother as Mr Hughes leapt out of his car. She still hadn’t got used to not calling him Captain Ellery. Mr Hughes lifted Mother’s case. ‘Mother, he asked me to manage the farm and the colony for him. There is so much he needs to learn.’
‘I’m sure there is. It’s a big undertaking. Ambitious too.’ Mother handed her the baby and nodded to Mr Hughes. He slid the suitcase into the boot. Then returned and lifted Emily’s and John’s cases. ‘And what did you say to Thomas?’ Mother asked.
‘I said that I would love nothing more than to be the manager.’ She swallowed. ‘But as long as it was a joint position with Martha, so we can share our duties and care of this one, and of course only if you were to say that you could cope in your new flat alone.’
She laid John in the pram and he grumbled at being abandoned.
Mother called to Mr Hughes. ‘Leave those two here,’ she said pointing to the suitcases. And then to Emily: ‘You’ve always been impossible – I hope Thomas knows what he’s in for.’
Before Emily could check whether Mother would be all right without her she pulled Emily to her, squeezing her tight. Emily buried her nose in the sweet-pea scent of Mother’s shoulders and closed her eyes while Mother rubbed her back.
Mr Hughes was back in the driving seat. The engine was running now.
Mother let her go, kissed baby John softly and patted Sally. Then she climbed into the car, and was gone.
‘I don’t know,’ Emily said to Sally. ‘It’s just as well that I had accepted the job. Hadn’t it occurred to Mother that we would never get the pram in Mr Hughes’ car?’
Chapter Thirty-Eight
December 1919
The weather was icy cold, and up on the ladder it blew across the orchard and tickled her face.
‘Now let’s look at you.’ She took in the top of the apple tree. They were late with the pruning this year. She had to move fast before the trees fell into their deep winter slumber.
A letter from Mother had arrived that morning; she’d fallen in with a circle of war widows who accompanied one another on trips to the theatre and concerts. There were parties all over town. As they stood on the eve of a new decade, the silence that had roared in their ears now stood aside for music and laughter. That was how Mother told it anyway.
Nothing much ever changed in the countryside. The birds still sang, the grass still rattled and the leaves still rustled.
She tapped her secateurs back along the branch to the growth from 1918, slotted them around it and snipped. A single fieldfare landed on a branch just beneath her. She didn’t move. There were individual speckled feathers on the bird’s chest where the wind lifted through them. It was a mute-coloured female, her head darting to and fro. The rest of her flock chattered at the bases of the trees eating the windfall fruit that no one else wanted that year.
John sat up in the Empire. A chubby prince surveying his kingdom, Sally by the wheels, his guard dog. Emily had given him some branches to wave about. He flapped an arm, pleased with himself, and disturbed the bird. It chack-chacked down to the others who in turn alighted together and swept across the paddock.
She snipped at another branch, and then another. Her pruning bundle was building up nicely, alongside Martha’s from the adjacent tree.
A familiar figure came across the orchard towards her, stopping to coo at John before carrying on. She clipped off the tip of one last branch, but the pruning could wait. She hooked her secateurs back on her belt, and descended the ladder. Tucked her hair behind her ears. Smoothed the ends. Straightened out her breeches.
‘How’s it going?’ she asked.
‘The men are settling in well to the house.’ Thomas greeted her with a peck to the cheek. Her eyes closed. His skin on hers was so soft. ‘They’re having lunch. Would you and John come up and say hello? We don’t want to overwhelm them, but I’d like to introduce your ideas for the plots as soon as possible. The sooner they’re thinking about what they want to grow and how they’ll make their mark, the sooner this will start to feel like home.’
He’d been so busy since he’d moved in to HopBine and taken over as the centre’s manager. He had lists pinned to every wall, and so many friends visiting and contributing: ideas, funds and equipment. All of it welcomed and all of it received into Thomas’s opened arms.
‘I’ll be up there with my seed potatoes and plot plans as soon as they’ve unpacked the suitcases. While they’re unpacking if you like?’
They’d ensure those soldiers settled and loved the place as much as they did. Leaving Martha to work, Thomas pushed John down the aisle of fruit trees towards the village. Sally gave a superior glance at Rover and followed Emily.
When they turned into Forge Lane, they followed the track that led to the centre of the village.
The war memorial had been built in a month so it was ready for Armistice Day. It was more personal than the Cenotaph in London – the huge white coffin of the unknown soldier, which had become the national monument to grief and loss.
There’s was simple: a stone with the name of every villager lost etched into it. Including John Cotham. A fitting memorial at the end of a quiet track. A place where the people who had known, loved and respected their boys passed by every day.
Further down the lane was a holly bush.
She threaded her hand amongst the violently red berries. Mrs Tipton would say this meant a cold, hard winter, which would mean a wonderful blossom on the apple trees come the spring.
She pinched a stem between thumb and forefinger and walked at a slow steady pace back down the lane. She laid the sprig, with its barbed leaves and scarlet berries, at the foot of the memorial and then gazed up at the sky. Thomas had closed his eyes. She shut hers too. And, when she opened them again, Thomas was there, waiting.
Historical Note
The women’s movement really sprang into action at the end of World War I. Positive steps forward in the workplace made by wartime women began to move backwards. In recognition of their war effort, pockets of land were given over to women who had worked the land. A colony for ex-land girls was set up in Lingfield in Sussex, funded by a suffragette, although it was established later than I have written it here. Sadly, mainly due to issues around housing, by the 1930s these projects had largely disappeared.
Acknowledgements
The first round of thanks go to Hannah Smith for her invaluable editorial input and support, and to both Hannah and Victoria Oundjian for seeing the potential in my idea in the first place. Also, to the team behind the novel, with notable thanks to Anna and Helena.
Next thanks to my writing group. Tanya Gupta for suggesting I went back in time from the thirties, and for sharing your knitting expertise. Sue Wilsher for help with the decision on whether to include that word in the finished novel, and to you both for your moral and practical support, as well as being there for the highs, lows and the gin.
During my research for this novel Hadlow College, The Women’s Library Reading Room at London School of Economics were particularly helpful.
Ralph Ruge for checking the German language and to my early readers; Jane Everett, Kerry Postle, Freda Burnside and Sian Pullen. And to my fellow land girls from Hadlow College – Jo, Sophie and Nancy – for listening to my ideas while we pruned, dug and planted.
Thanks to my mum, for being my mum.