Ella's War

by Lynne Francis

  ‘I think you’ll find I’m classed as a spinster, Mother,’ Grace had laughed. ‘It’s perfectly acceptable for a woman of my great age to live alone.’

  So the Wards were to spend a few months in Scotland, while they decided whether they would settle in Edinburgh, leaving Stevens, Ella and Elsie trying to work out what to do next. Elsie had been with the family nearly thirty years; Stevens and Ella had both seen near enough twenty years’ service each. Stevens was the only one who seemed to be excited once the news was relayed to them. He retained his composure, however, and listened gravely while Mr Ward broke the news of the family’s planned departure, laying out the terms of the servants’ notice period. As soon as the trio were back in the kitchen, Stevens became jubilant.

  ‘Finally!’ he exclaimed. ‘I knew it was coming. Now I can get on with planning the rest of my life.’

  Ella and Elsie were despondent. ‘I wish I felt the same way,’ Elsie said. ‘I suppose I’d best go and stay with my sister in Leeds once we’re done here. I’ll look for another position from there.’ She didn’t sound too happy at the prospect.

  Ella stared into the cup of tea that Elsie had made, biting her bottom lip. She would go back to Northwaite, of course. It would be lovely to see Beth and John and, with Beth expecting her first child, perhaps she could be of some use to them all. Sarah might be glad of her company, too, but as for seeking alternative employment, well, she wasn’t sure where to start. The way people lived had changed greatly since the war and servants weren’t much in demand these days, except in the largest houses. Probably the best she could hope for would be a position as a live-in companion to an elderly lady.

  The last month of service passed mercifully swiftly. The house had to be cleaned from top to bottom and possessions cleared out or packed away in boxes. Mrs Ward came upon Ella as she sorted through the toy cupboard in the nursery.

  ‘You must take whatever you like, to give to John and Beth for the new baby.’ Mrs Ward paused. ‘In fact, please make up a box, Ella, and I will speak to Mr Ward about driving over to see them both before we leave for Scotland.’

  Ella nodded, only too well aware that during the six months that had elapsed since the wedding the Wards hadn’t once visited the newly-weds. She wondered whether John minded not seeing his parents.

  Would the new baby be a boy or a girl? Ella wondered, as she sorted through the old toys. They were all John’s, those belonging to his older sisters having been discarded a long time ago, but it hardly mattered. She was sure that John would be delighted to rediscover them, even if it would be some while before a spinning top or a wooden hoop would be suitable for the baby whose birth was still over three months away. She picked up the A–Z of Animals, John’s favourite book as a child, and flicked through it, smiling when she reached the Puffin page. She rested the open book on her lap as she knelt on the floor, surrounded by the pile of toys, and gazed unseeing into the distance. It seemed such a long time since John had shown her this picture in the kitchen, well before she was able to read, and so many things had happened in that time. Shaking off the melancholy that was in danger of descending, she devoted herself instead to the task before her. By the end of the afternoon, the nursery was clear apart from one large wooden trunk awaiting its new home.

  Although Ella had been dreading her last day at Grange House, by the time it dawned she was glad to go. With all the rooms packed up and much of the furniture sold or sent to storage, it no longer felt like the place she had called home for so many years. The Wards had said their farewells a day earlier, before they headed first to Northwaite and then on to Scotland. They had been fulsome in their praise and their thanks for everyone’s hard work and loyalty over the years. Shaking their hands, Mr Ward had pressed an envelope on each of them, wishing them the very best for their future.

  ‘It’s just a small bonus, for long service and to help you in some small way as you step into your future,’ he said. Ella, surprised, felt tears start to her eyes. Mrs Ward said, rather awkwardly, that she felt sure they would see Ella again in Northwaite when they came to visit their new grandchild. Ella, wondering privately how likely this was, smiled, nodded in agreement and waved them off, Elsie and Stevens at her side.

  ‘Well,’ Stevens said, as they stood at a loss, not quite sure what to do next. ‘I think we should drink a toast to our future. I saved a bottle of Mr Ward’s champagne: I rather think we deserve it.’

  Later that evening, as Ella made her way up to her room – head spinning a little, since it transpired that Stevens had saved a rather nice bottle of wine, too – she reflected that tomorrow evening she would be home once more in Northwaite. It was an exciting thought, one that brought a smile to her lips. In the next instant, a wave of sadness threatened to overwhelm her. Stevens and Elsie were also her family now. How would she manage without seeing them every day, after all these years?

  Telling herself firmly not to be silly, that it was the start of a new chapter in her life, she sat down on the bed and looked at her bag, packed and ready to go. It stood against the wall, her travelling dress and coat hanging above it. The house seemed very quiet with just the three of them left. She wondered whether Stevens and Elsie were prey to the same mix of emotions; they had all been very jolly that evening, reminiscing over times past, and they had drunk more than one toast to the future in a spirit of great optimism. Ella, sensing all that positivity starting to ebb away, resolutely turned off the lamp and climbed into bed. She closed her eyes tightly and waited for sleep to claim her, telling herself that everything would seem brighter once more when morning came.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  The first inkling that Ella had of how her life was set to change came after she had been settled for some weeks back in Northwaite. Beth had sent word to Lane End Cottage via her neighbour’s son, Joe, that Ella was to come at once to their house in Church Lane.

  Ella, suddenly anxious and in a hurry to leave, struggled with trembling fingers to do up the buttons on her coat.

  ‘Do you think the baby has come?’ she asked her mother. ‘But then why didn’t she ask for the both of us?’ The neighbour’s boy had been unforthcoming with information, simply saying that there was a visitor.

  ‘Do you think the visitor is the doctor? If so, why didn’t he say so?’

  Sarah laughed and opened the door to usher her out. ‘You’ll know what it’s all about soon enough. Now, make haste. And don’t forget to come back soon and tell me all about it. I’m as mystified as you are.’

  Ella was quite out of breath by the time she arrived at Beth and John’s cottage. When it was Beth who opened the back door to her impatient knocking she was quite taken aback.

  ‘Oh, I had expected to find you abed and with the midwife in attendance. I was worried.’

  Beth patted her swollen belly ruefully. ‘Nothing happening as yet. Although I didn’t feel able to make the walk over to you, which is why I sent Joe from next door over with a message. Now, come and see our visitor. He’s with John in the parlour.’

  Ella followed Beth into the kitchen and through into the tiny front parlour. A man stood at the window, his back to the room as he looked out towards the church. He was just a silhouette and Ella could make out nothing of his features but she was instantly transported back through the years to when Albert had turned up so unexpectedly in Luddenden. Her heart lurched and she almost said his name out loud, but at that moment the figure turned towards her.

  ‘Mr Stevens?’ she said uncertainly. ‘Why, whatever are you doing here? Is something wrong?’ Her mind raced but, with Grange House and everything associated with it now gone, she couldn’t come up with a reason for his presence.

  Stevens smiled broadly and ignored her question. ‘It’s been lovely catching up with Beth’s news,’ he said. ‘And it’s wonderful to see John looking so well. He’s promised to show me one of his favourite walks later, before I have to take the train back to York. But I have to confess that it’s you I came to see. I ha
ve a proposal to make.’

  ‘A proposal?’ Ella echoed, feeling suddenly faint. Whatever could he mean?

  John stepped forward and offered Ella a chair. ‘Here, sit down. Beth and I will go and make some tea. We’ve heard a little about it already. We think you’ll be pleased.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t mind me sharing the news with them first,’ Stevens said apologetically after John and Beth had left the room. ‘It seemed rude to turn up on their doorstep out of the blue without some sort of explanation.’

  Ella sat down suddenly. ‘How did you…?’ She broke off.

  ‘Find you?’ Stevens finished her sentence. ‘Oh, that wasn’t difficult. Mr Ward wrote here quite frequently. I remembered the address from the envelopes. Now, as to my proposal. But first of all, I must insist that you call me George from now on. We’re no longer in service, after all.’

  ‘George,’ Ella murmured obediently, wondering when he was going to get to the point.

  Before he could continue, the door opened and Beth came in with the teapot, followed by John bearing a tray of cups and saucers.

  Beth took in Ella’s expression. ‘Has he asked you yet?’ she demanded.

  Mutely, Ella shook her head, starting to feel panic-stricken. Whatever could this be about?

  ‘I was wondering whether I could persuade you to join me in Scarborough?’ Registering Ella’s look of bewilderment, Stevens hastened to add, ‘In a business venture, of course.’

  ‘Scarborough?’ Ella was bemused. Her most recent memory of the town was of the damage it had suffered so early in the war, when it had been shelled from the sea. The atrocity had forced the whole country into the realisation that, despite being an island, Britain was just as vulnerable to invasion by Germany as Belgium and France. Prior to the war, Scarborough had been a fashionable holiday resort, but Ella had never been there. York was the furthest she had travelled. She had never even seen the sea.

  ‘Yes, Scarborough.’ Stevens, or George as she was going to have to become accustomed to calling him, pressed on. ‘I’ve come into a legacy, enough to buy a small guest house there. We can take holidaymakers in the summer months and boarders in the winter. And Elsie has agreed to come as cook.’

  ‘Elsie?’ Ella felt she could do nothing but parrot his words back to him. This looked set to be a day of surprises.

  And so it was to prove. No sooner had Ella digested George’s proposal, and started to view it with some enthusiasm, having gathered her wits enough to question him further, than Beth suddenly gasped and looked stricken.

  ‘What is it?’ John looked concerned.

  Beth tried to stand. ‘I think the baby might be on the way!’

  Everyone leapt up at once and the small sitting room was suddenly full of anxious people, all getting in each other’s way. Ella and John helped Beth upstairs and Joe-from-next-door was dispatched once again, this time to fetch the midwife. Ella suddenly remembered that Sarah needed to be told what was happening.

  ‘I can go and fetch her,’ George said firmly. ‘You’re needed here and John is in too much of a state. Just tell me where to go.’

  He was back within the half hour with Sarah, no longer so spry on her feet, on his arm. He tried to slip away then, but this time John was firm.

  ‘Don’t abandon me. I need some male company at a time like this,’ he said, in mock despair. So George stayed and paced the floor with him, taking him out on short excursions around the village when John could no longer stand the sound of Beth’s cries from the room above. By the end of the afternoon, an exhausted Beth and an ecstatic John were the proud parents of baby Christopher, who seemed disposed to be wide-awake when he wasn’t being noisy.

  ‘I’m away now to catch my train,’ said George at last, after he had been thanked by John for all his support and made to promise that he would return in due course to be Christopher’s godfather. He turned to Ella. ‘I’ll send word when I have found a suitable place in Scarborough. It should allow you plenty of time to spend with your nephew first.’

  Ella, quite overcome with all the emotion of the day, seized his hands. ‘Thank you! I’m very much looking forward to it. I can’t quite believe how lucky I am.’

  ‘I think the luck’s all mine,’ George murmured, smiling to himself as he closed the front door behind him. Much noise and laughter, punctuated by faint cries, came from the open bedroom window above as he strode along Church Lane and onwards through the village, before heading down towards the station at Nortonstall.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Scarborough delighted Ella from the moment she arrived there. The view out over the sea entranced her and she made sure that all her excursions took her on routes that looked out across the bay. She loved the steep climb up to the ruins of the castle, the Italian Gardens so beautifully laid out on South Cliff, Peasholm Park and the Valley Gardens; she even enjoyed crossing Valley Bridge with its breath-taking drop below.

  Her new life in the town proved to be a joy in more ways than one. It had been hard work at first: she and Elsie ran the guest house more or less single-handedly for the first few months, with George coming in every day from his tiny flat nearby to man the front desk and help out wherever he was needed. Over a period of a couple of years, as seaside holidays increased in popularity after the war years, and Scarborough became a fashionable resort once more, they had been able to add to their staff and their burdens eased a little. In her free time, Ella had taken up painting again. She joined a local art class, concentrating on painting flowers and local landscapes with such astonishing results that George had insisted hers should be the only paintings to be hung around the hotel. Ella wondered whether she had been the only one to be amazed when, a year after they had started to run what looked set to be a very successful small hotel, George asked her to marry him. She had surprised herself by saying ‘Yes,’ without hesitation. She had come to see him as her best friend in the world, someone from whom she never wanted to be parted, so it seemed but a small step from that to becoming man and wife. Freed from her role as servant, Ella had blossomed, enjoying the relative freedom she had as both a mature woman and a co-proprietor of a business. Sometimes, in quieter moments, she looked back over the years and shook her head in disbelief: who would have thought that she would be married after all, just before she reached her fortieth birthday, to the steadiest, kindest man you could ever hope to meet. A man whose love for Ella, it turned out, had been nurtured quietly and secretly over many years without her ever suspecting. She accused George of being devious in the way in which he had persuaded her to join him in Scarborough.

  ‘There I was, thinking you were in need of a housekeeper and all along it was a wife you were after,’ Ella teased.

  George just smiled and refused to be drawn but Ella’s heart was full. For the first time in her adult life she had discovered how it felt to have someone care for her, and to put her needs above their own.

  When the peak summer season was over and it was safe to leave the hotel in the hands of their experienced manager, Ella and George would drive over to visit Beth and John, still living a quiet, but contented, life in Northwaite and now with a new addition, baby Eileen, to join young Christopher.

  ‘As if they weren’t spoilt enough by their doting Granny Sarah!’ exclaimed Beth when Ella and George arrived bearing a huge teddy bear for the new arrival and a shiny red toy fire engine for Christopher. Alas, Christopher wasn’t pleased by the amount of attention that his new baby sister was receiving, and in a fit of bad temper and jealousy was caught trying to tear the ears off the new toy bear.

  When all efforts at distraction had failed and Christopher’s wails showed no sign of abating, Ella whispered something to George who obligingly vanished out into the garden. After a few minutes she reached out her hand and said, ‘Come on Christopher, shall we go and see where Uncle George has got to?’

  Trustingly, he put his small, damp palm in hers and she squeezed it gently, transported in an instant back over the years
to when Beth, and then John, had done just the same thing. Clasping baby Eileen tightly to her shoulder she led Christopher into the garden, where George was loitering casually by the rowan tree.

  ‘Do you want to come and see what I’ve found?’ he asked Christopher, who broke free from Ella’s grip and toddled towards him very fast. George bent down to catch him, then swung him up to shoulder level and pointed into the branches of the tree.

  ‘You know, I do believe this is a fairy tree,’ he said. ‘And I think the fairies have left a gift for you.’

  ‘Where? Where?’ Christopher’s eyes shone with excitement.

  ‘I have a feeling that you might only be able to see it if you promise to be a good brother to your baby sister.’ George said. ‘I believe the fairies are very particular about that sort of thing.’

  ‘Promise…’ muttered Christopher, clearly finding it a struggle.

  George grasped Christopher around the middle and held him up before him. ‘Look a bit higher. Do you see anything now?’

  With a squeal of excitement, Christopher reached into the branches and pulled out a shiny, foil-wrapped bar of chocolate, which had been wedged into a fork of the main trunk. His eyes were like saucers as George lowered him carefully to the ground, and he cast one or two glances upwards as if to check whether he might have missed anything else.

  ‘Fairies,’ Christopher breathed. ‘Fairies have been.’ And with that he took off into the house, desperate to show his mother the amazing find.

  Ella and George exchanged broad smiles, trying not to laugh. Eileen stirred on Ella’s shoulder and turned her head, opening her eyes sleepily to regard George with a piercing blue gaze. Ella felt a sudden throb of worry. She and George could never have this sort of family life together. Would this be a problem for him? For herself, she was resigned to the fact and deeply grateful that she could at least enjoy Beth and John’s family. She was already looking forward to the time, hopefully not too far in the future, when they could come to the seaside in the summer, spending hours on the sand just like other families. Perhaps Beth and John would even leave the children with her and she could find out, for a week or two, what it felt like to have a family of her own.