She turned to the last page of the letter and found a question answered that she had intended to ask Sarah but had forgotten all about. ‘Albert came to visit me before he left,’ Sarah wrote. ‘He reassured me that if anything were to happen to him my tenancy of the cottage was secure for as long as I wanted it. I’d told him not to be silly, that he would be back before he knew it, and waved him off in full expectation of seeing him again before Christmas. Now I regret so much not saying something more meaningful, not reiterating how thankful I am, indeed we all are, for his kindness to us.’
Tears started to Ella’s eyes and she felt a terrible pang of guilt. When Albert had made a special effort to seek her out before he went to France, ostensibly to tell her about Williams, had it really been to offer her an apology of sorts for what had passed between them? She had chosen to be irritated by what she perceived as him tying up some loose ends. And she hadn’t even thought to thank him for the security that his actions in buying Lane End Cottage had offered her family. With a sense of shame at her selfishness she wondered whether Albert had had a very clear idea of the future that lay in store for him in France. Had he perhaps even chosen to put himself in the way of danger on purpose?
Hearing steps on the stairs she hastily hid the letter under her pillow and lay down on the bed. Beth came into the room, concerned as to where she was.
‘Could you tell Mrs S that I have a terrible headache, but that I will be down as soon as possible?’ Ella felt that the colour of her cheeks, flushed from crying, would add weight to her words.
‘Oh, you poor thing. We wondered where you had got to. You must stay here until you feel better.’ Beth considerately drew the curtains and then left, while Ella lay for a while in the half-light, her thoughts ranging far and wide. She tried to imagine the day-to-day routine of the war, as Albert must have experienced it, but her imagination failed her. She had seen the grainy newspaper photos of life at the Front, of the columns of soldiers marching through the fields of France, but she struggled to set the Albert that she knew in this terrible place.
After a while, she got up, opened the curtains, splashed her face with a little cold water to cool her hot cheeks and made her way downstairs to resume her duties. She would tell Beth that evening, when they were getting ready for bed. She thought it would be a shock to her, the first time that war had touched anyone they knew, but she didn’t think that Beth, being so young at the time, would have been aware of what an important part Albert had played in their lives.
Ella, however, hadn’t taken into consideration that most of Beth’s childhood had been spent in Northwaite and she had no doubt seen a great deal of Albert. Beth’s eyes filled with tears and she had sobbed for quite some time. When she was calm enough to speak she said, ‘What a terrible waste of life. His poor wife and son. We must write them a letter of condolence.’ And she set about the task at once, making Ella ashamed again for thinking of herself more than others at such a time.
Why had Albert chosen to go to war? she wondered. Was it patriotic fervour, a desire to save his country? Ella wanted to believe this but, the more she thought about it, his mood when he came to say goodbye had not been that of a man heading to war with a belief in a great cause. In fact, he hadn’t once mentioned what lay ahead of him; rather, his actions and words were those of a man with a personal mission to fulfil.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
As the year turned and 1914 became 1915, any New Year celebrations were as muted as they had been at Christmas. Ella felt as though they were all trying hard to hang onto a life that seemed to change daily. Beth took the view that some of the changes were for the better.
‘More women are getting the chance to work now that so many men have gone away to war,’ she observed. ‘And not just as servants. In factories and in other jobs that once would have been thought unsuitable for women. I’ve heard that you can earn as much as three pounds a week for a night shift in a munitions factory, or thirty shillings for a day shift. Can you imagine?’
They were both silent while they contemplated such riches.
‘Well,’ Ella said uncertainly, ‘that’s all well and good but there’s lodgings to be paid for out of that. And food and clothes,’ she added, warming to her theme. ‘We have all that provided here.’
‘I know,’ said Beth, wistfully, ‘but I would like the chance to do something different. It feels as though other people are doing something for the war, but we aren’t.’
Ella, with her experience of mill work, felt that, given the choice, she would prefer to see out her days as a servant, rather than working in a factory, but she could understand Beth’s restlessness. War seemed to fill everyone’s thoughts most of the time: it was in the newspaper and touched on in seemingly every conversation. There was no escape, even at the market. On a trip to buy vegetables from her regular stall recently, she had been puzzled to find that it wasn’t where it usually stood. There was simply a gap in the row of stalls. Produce was hard to come by since many young agricultural workers had signed up and gone to war and the stalls had very sparse displays these days compared to pre-war times. But, Ella thought, this must be the first time a stall had simply disappeared. Knowing how much the family that ran the stall relied on the income, she enquired of the neighbouring stallholders whether someone had fallen ill.
The stallholder to the left simply turned away, her face closed, and said, ‘I couldn’t say,’ then concentrated on serving a customer. The man to the right was more forthcoming.
‘It was their name, see,’ he said. ‘Sounded a bit foreign. There was some here that took exception. Reported them to the market committee. Made up a lot of daft stories from what I could tell. Anyways, the committee took away their licence.’
Ella was aghast. ‘Of course they had a foreign-sounding name. They’re from Holland originally. This must be put right. Who can I speak to about it?’ She looked around as if she might spot an official hiding amongst the cabbages and potatoes.
The man shook his head. ‘T’aint no use, miss. You’ll do yourself a favour by staying out of it. There’s people here who’d have you down as a friend of the Germans if you speak up.’ Then he, too, turned away to serve a customer.
Ella shivered in the cold wind that whipped between the stalls and looked around her. Several of the stallholders were looking at her with open curiosity and she realised that tears, of rage as much as anything else, were coursing down her cheeks. She returned to Grange House empty-handed and had to explain herself to Mrs S and Elsie. They were as indignant as she was.
‘As if you could be doing anyone any harm, standing in a market selling vegetables!’ Elsie exclaimed. ‘Why, what did they think they were going to do? Poison us?’ The import of her words struck her as she spoke and her hand flew to her mouth.
Ella laughed in spite of herself. ‘I think there would be easier ways to cause harm than by lacing the vegetables that you were selling with arsenic.’ Then she grew solemn again. ‘It seems to me that things are bad enough without everyone becoming suspicious of people around them, people whom they’ve known for years.’
Spring brought more news from Northwaite, news that filled both Ella and Beth with dread. Sarah wrote to say that Thomas had joined up. Since he had been living with his wife Lilian in Leeds they saw him barely once a year. It seemed he had joined the Pals battalion made up of local men, many of them from the printworks where he was employed. Ella and Beth wondered whether he was going with a glad heart. Although they tried to retain a semblance of patriotic fervour, Albert’s death had made them only too aware of the heartbreak and loss of war and they had started to view news of the latest enlistments with something approaching fear.
Mr Stevens overheard them discussing it.
‘Well, he’ll be training with friends at least,’ he said, to comfort them. ‘Although how businesses manage when so many of their workers sign up at once, I don’t know. Maybe he won’t even be needed. Or not in France – not all the troops go to the F
ront, you know.’
Beth and Ella took it in turns to write to Thomas. His letters were chatty and full of the novelty of being at training camp.
‘He’s like a child,’ Ella said at one point, exasperated, after a letter full of news about the pranks they’d played, the new friends he’d made and the rumours that they might soon be headed to France. ‘He’s treating it all like a big game.’
‘Maybe it’s his way of dealing with it?’ Beth mused. ‘On the other hand, it’s probably one of the most exciting things to have happened to him.’
‘I hadn’t thought of it like that. You might be right.’ Ella was thoughtful. Young men who hadn’t yet joined up were under increasing pressure to do so. She’d heard John having more than one fierce discussion with his father about it. Once John had discovered that Thomas was now in the army, he asked them frequently whether they had heard from him and what he was up to. As the months passed, he had become more and more keen to enlist, but Mr Ward urged caution.
‘He’s just thinking about the future of his wretched business,’ John stormed one evening, when he had escaped from a row at the dinner table and taken refuge down in the kitchen. ‘I’m feeling like a total idiot at the office; I’m young, fit, unmarried. I should have joined up by now. There are rumours that conscription is coming: I don’t want to wait until I’m forced to enlist. I’ll look like a coward.’
‘Your father is worried about you,’ Ella tried to soothe him. ‘You’re his only son. Of course he is concerned about the business – all his hopes for the future are invested in it. But he wants to protect his family too.’
John turned to Beth, hoping for her blessing for his determination. It dawned on Ella that their antipathy towards each other over the past few years had somehow dissipated without her really noticing. She couldn’t pinpoint when the change had happened. Was it when John had started work? Had that somehow put them on a more equal footing in Beth’s eyes? Or was it that they had both grown and changed from the awkwardness of youth?
She suddenly realised what handsome young adults they had both become, yet contrasting in seemingly every way. John was tall, fair and well mannered; Beth petite, dark and outspoken. Their backgrounds could hardly be more different yet they seemed to have an affinity. Perhaps it was simply their ages – they were both twenty years old. It was an age when they should have been having the time of their lives, but war had got in the way.
She despaired as she thought of how the war was laying waste to so many of the country’s young men. The newspapers carried regular reports of the mounting death toll – reports that she could barely bring herself to read. Already names of men that she knew had appeared amongst the lists of the dead, such as Albert, some of John’s schoolfellows, neighbour’s sons. It seemed as though there was barely a family they knew that hadn’t been affected in some way.
In the meantime, while Ella’s thoughts had wandered, Beth and John’s conversation had turned into a forceful discussion. Beth was holding her own, Ella noted approvingly, and John – far from being put out – was clearly enjoying the debate.
‘Time to put all our differences aside,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s getting late and we all have to be up in the morning.’ And some of us earlier than others, she thought to herself as she set about making sure that the kitchen was tidy. Beth and John rose to their feet but seemed disinclined to stop their conversation.
‘Make sure you turn off the lamps,’ she said pointedly as she closed the kitchen door and headed up to bed, smiling to herself. She was fast asleep long before Beth crept into the room sometime later.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
As the year wore on, first Doris, and then Rosa, left Grange House. Doris went to work at the chocolate factory; with so many of their men gone to war they had started to employ more and more women.
‘Is there much call for chocolate these days?’ Ella was doubtful. ‘Isn’t there a danger that the job won’t last with the war on?’
Doris shook her head emphatically, making her auburn curls bounce. ‘No danger of that. People want sweet treats even more when times are hard. And chocolate is one of the most popular things in the parcels that families send to the troops, so the orders won’t dry up anytime soon.’
Beth was envious. ‘You’ll be surrounded by chocolate all day. What could be nicer?’
Doris laughed. ‘It doesn’t work like that. The factory is huge and there are separate sections for different things. I won’t necessarily be working with chocolate. Maybe almond paste. Or other flavourings. There’s a wonderful smell of chocolate, though. It hangs over the whole place.’
Regular reports came back via Rosa for the next few months. ‘She gets one of those new electric trams right to work; can you imagine?’ and ‘She’s earning so much that she’s even managing to save.’ It wasn’t long before Rosa announced that she, too, would be leaving.
‘Doris has asked me to share a room with her in town,’ she told Ella and Beth. ‘If I don’t leave now I’ll be pushed, I reckon. No one needs a lady’s maid with things the way they are. All the entertaining, all those visitors we used to have – that life’s gone. And it’s time I went too.’
Beth thought it seemed like a daring thing to do and she was very taken with the idea but Rosa told her it was no place for her and that some of the women were a rough bunch, smoking and swearing. ‘Just like men,’ Rosa said.
Even so, Beth felt there was more adventure to be had working in a factory than being stuck in Grange House, helping to run the household on a skeleton staff. At least it would make her feel like she was contributing to the war effort, and give her something in common with John. For John had finally signed up. The tipping point had come when Marion, the lover he could never have and never forsake, died suddenly and unexpectedly of complications related to childbirth. Ella wasn’t sure whether it was grief over her death, the need to get away from Grey & Partners or a sense of the futility of his life – or a combination of all three – that finally made John go against his father’s wishes. Whatever the cause, within a week of Marion’s death, John had paid a visit to the recruiting office in town and been told to pack a bag for camp. He was going to be part of the first wave of fast-tracked officers, due for imminent secondment to an officer cadet camp in Newmarket for training.
In early February 1916, on a bright, sunny day with a bitter wind blowing across Knavesmire, the family assembled to see him off. All the servants were in close attendance, too. Everyone waved, smiled and wished him luck but once he was out of view a more sombre mood descended. Ella observed that Mr Ward looked grim, while Mrs Ward pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes before wrapping her coat around her and hurrying indoors. The servants returned to the kitchen.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Elsie sighed. ‘I’ve known him his whole life. Will we ever see him again?’ She put her hand up to her mouth, as though she couldn’t believe that she had voiced her thoughts, then used the corner of her apron to wipe her eyes.
Ella couldn’t trust herself to speak. Memories of John as a young boy came flooding back: of sleeping by his bedside for all those months when he was plagued with nightmares; the feel of his trusting hand in hers at the fair; his confidences about his hatred of work and his love for Marion. Who would be there for him to turn to when he went off to war?
Mr Stevens, seeing how upset Elsie and Ella were, spoke up bracingly. ‘He’s only left for training camp. It will be a while before they’re called on to go anywhere. And who knows, maybe the war will be over before he’s needed.’
Beth was silent. Ella suspected that she was thinking of Thomas. His company had been kicking its heels for a while now, eager to be let loose for the job for which they had been trained. They had been sent here and there on exercises and there was regularly talk of them going overseas, but as yet it had amounted to nothing. While she understood the frustration that he expressed in his letters to them, she couldn’t help but hope that the situation remained unchanged.
The household now had Mr Stevens, Mrs S, Elsie, Ella and Beth looking after just Mr and Mrs Ward and Grace. However, Mrs Sugden’s elderly mother had fallen sick and, with no one else to step in, it fell to Mrs S to return home to care for her until some other arrangements could be made. When the government announced that households should be patriotic and cut their staff to a minimum, releasing their workers to join the war effort, Ella feared that Rosa’s words had been prophetic. But Mrs Ward thought differently. She took the unusual step of summoning them to a meeting and addressing them all directly.
‘None of you are eligible to be called up. Stevens, I’m afraid you are above the age limit of forty-one.’ The butler looked suitably embarrassed. ‘However, we are in the fortunate position of being able to help the local community and I propose utilising all our skills to do so. I intend to introduce regular tea parties here for the war widows as a way of reaching out to those in need in the wider community. I’m considering volunteering Beth’s skills as a seamstress for any war work required locally, and possibly we can utilise Elsie’s experience as a cook in some way. I don’t anticipate any of us being idle.’
This plan was to sustain Mrs Ward through the war years and it also helped Ella and Beth to feel as though they were making a valuable contribution. Elsie was prevailed upon to give simple cookery lessons to a small group of local ladies who had lost their husbands, teaching them how to stretch their limited household budgets by cooking economically.
Ella's War Page 18