The Chilbury Ladies' Choir

by Jennifer Ryan

  3 CHURCH ROW,

  CHILBURY,

  KENT.

  Thursday, 1st August, 1940

  Dear Clara,

  Today I happened upon some extremely useful information, a trump card to trump all trumps. The morsel of which I speak is news that the Brigadier’s unwed daughter is pregnant. And you’ll never guess where I found this nugget of dirt—it was from the foolish girl herself.

  There was a muffled knock at my door at about four this afternoon, and when I answered, there she was, all prettily done up but clearly flustered. She almost barged past me into the sitting room, looking behind her to check if anyone saw. Her rudeness was outstanding, but such was my intrigue that I planted a welcoming smile on my lips and followed behind.

  “I need you to help me, Miss Paltry,” she said in quivering tones.

  I sat down, brightening at the prospect. “Of course I can help, my dear. What do you need?”

  “I need an abortion,” she said through gritted teeth, and the elation within me rose like a choir invisible, singing the praises of a new unprecedented opportunity.

  And you know me, Clara. I wasn’t going to let it get away.

  “How many people know you’re pregnant?” I asked quickly.

  “But can you help me?” she snapped. She was in a trough of a mood, her face contorting into that of her odious dead brother.

  “Of course I can help you, my dear,” I went over and patted her lap. “I know a specialist in Litchfield who can do it easy as pulling a chicken’s neck.”

  She pulled away with a grimace on her face, and I beamed forward at her. “But it has to be hush-hush, so does anyone know? Your parents?”

  “No, of course they don’t know,” she snapped, getting up and smoothing down her skirt, her nostrils screwing up as if she smelled the whiff of cat about the place. “It’s not Mrs. Nees, is it?”

  “Not Mrs. Nees?” I repeated quickly with a frown. Who’d she been talking to if she knew that name? Of course Nees is the only one round here, but I quickly had to pretend I knew someone else. “I’ve never heard of Mrs. Nees,” I said all innocent. “But I’d never let you go to anyone bad, if that’s what you mean. A nice lady like you. I have a much better specialist in mind, a man who used to be a doctor.”

  She didn’t sit back down, just looked out the window at the banks of the pond, as if remembering something. “Why isn’t he a doctor anymore?”

  “You can’t ask too many questions, girl. I tell it to you straight. He’s done an all right job in the past. No deaths yet.” I coughed a little. “To my knowledge.”

  Her face suddenly dissolved into tears, and she ran for the door.

  “Shall I ask him if he’s free?” I called after her as she raced across the green, the heels of her shoes sinking into the grass as her white shawl billowed out behind her, like one of those Greek statues, like a perfect daughter.

  Except I knew the devil cringing inside her dirty little womb.

  I backed into my house and locked the door. I wasn’t keen on getting an abortion for her anyway. No, I was interested in the much bigger prize glittering from the hand of the Brigadier. How debilitated he would be at the news of his daughter despoiled by a commoner. I would ask him for the rest of my money straightaway, and if he put up any resistance, I’d play my trump card.

  I had to strike fast in case he found out from someone else first, and remembered I’d overheard Kitty at choir saying that he was in London today. You see how useful joining their ridiculous choir has been? She said he was at a supposed war meeting, more likely meeting his mistress if you ask me. I quickly worked out that he’d be on the evening train, the 9:21. So after dinner I took myself off to the station to wait.

  I arrived early and stood outside the station reading the timetables, just in case I was spotted. I didn’t want company for my little chat with the Brigadier. But the only person who came off the train was the Vicar back from Litchfield.

  I stormed around for a few minutes and was just about to take off when I heard voices from the platform. On poking my head around the corner, I saw the Brigadier giving the guard strong words about something, the train being late, or untidy, or too jerky. He had been on the 9:21 after all.

  And he was clearly not in a good mood.

  I drew back outside and took a deep breath. It was almost dark, the sky a dappled dark blue with stars squinting through the gaps, and the sound of the train chuffed into the unknown. I shivered with discomfort, but the deed had to be done. I had to remember that I had the winning hand.

  “Brigadier,” I called to him softly as his shadow appeared at the entrance. “I was hoping to catch you here.”

  “What? Who’s there?” he asked gruffly, standing straight and looking around menacingly.

  I stepped forward. “It’s your business partner.” I smiled.

  He became flustered, looking around in case anyone else was witness to this. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came for a little chat,” I said. “I thought I could give you some company on your walk home. You see, I want the rest of my money now.”

  He paused momentarily. “Don’t be ridiculous, woman. You’ll wait till the summer is up, if you get it at all,” he spat. “There are rumors belowstairs, so you’d better watch your step or you’ll be locked up.”

  Damn that Elsie. I’ve seen her around the village, smirking at me when she brushes past me in the shop. I knew she couldn’t keep her trap shut.

  “But, Brigadier, I think you should listen to me as I have some information that could send your family name plunging.”

  “What do you mean?” he said, continuing his pace up the road. “Are you trying to threaten me? Don’t underestimate my temper.”

  “What if it were something deeply humiliating, something ruinous?” I said softly.

  He stopped. “I know everything, you wretched woman. Now leave me alone.”

  “No, you don’t know everything,” I spat. “You don’t know that your eldest daughter is pregnant with Slater’s child.”

  I thought he was simply going to keel over in front of me. His face turned purple, and his hand went up to his heart. He staggered, then let out a long, hard bellow. “How dare you suggest such a thing?”

  “It’s true,” I mumbled, edging back. I thought he was going to lunge at me. Take his anger out on me.

  “It can’t be true,” he yelled. “It can’t possibly be true.” And he began storming up the hill. “We’ll see about this.”

  “What about my money, for keeping your dirty little secrets?” I asked, scurrying beside him to keep up.

  He stopped sharply, his bony hand gripped on my upper arm, his fingers digging into my flesh. “You stay out of this, Paltry,” he growled. “Or you’ll be a dead woman.”

  The whites of his eyes glistened murderously in the moonlight. He was out of his mind with rage. I hadn’t thought this through properly. He could murder me for even suggesting such a thing.

  “If you breathe a word of any of your abominable lies I will have your pointless life cut short, my woman. So you’d better make yourself scarce.”

  With that he shoved me back onto the road, where I fell badly on my hip, paralyzing me briefly with pain. When I pushed myself up, he was gone into the blackness.

  I struggled to my feet and staggered home, feeling sorry for myself. My plan had gone wrong. My tactics were flawed. I never imagined he wouldn’t believe me, that he simply couldn’t bear for it to be true to the extent that he would rather slaughter me.

  As I sit here in my little front room, counting the half of the money, I know, dear sister, that I’ll have to cut my losses and leave first light tomorrow. The Brigadier will kill me one way or another, especially with Elsie talking loose. I have sealed my doom.

  I will be with you in a few days, and we will make good our plans.

  Edwina

  Thursday, 1st August, 1940

  My Very Own War Effort

  More bad news today
. The Nazis invaded our Channel Islands. They took the younger men away to fight and began starving everyone else. We know it’s us next. Which is why I decided it was my duty to tell someone about seeing Old George and Mr. Slater in the woods, and adding what I suspect about Proggett, who is certainly not just butlering. Perhaps I’ll end up with a medal, the hero of the village.

  At first I considered cycling to Litchfield Police Station, but it’s quite a long ride, and I’m rather busy with singing practice at the moment. Then I wondered if I should ask Mrs. Tilling what to do, as she’s the most helpful person around here, and then the answer struck me. Mrs. Tilling has an important Colonel from Litchfield Park staying with her, and he quite liked my singing at the competition. Surely he would be able to give my information the proper attention it deserves.

  So this evening, after dinner, I told Mama that I was to go to Prim’s house for a special singing lesson, grabbed my torch, and headed down to the village in the purple and amber light of dusk. All was deadly quiet, not a stir of a bat or the usual foxes tiptoeing across to the wood—it was as if something horrid was going to happen tonight, something evil was snaking silently into our world.

  I began running, and reached Ivy House short of breath, scared of invisible villains chasing me. I pulled the bell and within a minute the door opened a few inches and Mrs. Tilling whisked me inside.

  “Kitty, what in the world are you doing here?”

  I stood in the hallway, relieved to see the familiar flowered wallpaper, the kitchen door open at the end of the passage, the smell of a casserole wafting around.

  “I’ve come to see the Colonel,” I said boldly. “Is he here?”

  Mrs. Tilling looked surprised for a moment, then shrugged. “Come on into the living room,” she said. “He’s eating dinner. I’ll make a pot of tea, and he can come when he’s ready.”

  The Colonel was enormous. I’ve seen him in the village and at the choir competition, but being so close to him, in Mrs. Tilling’s living room, made me inch back in fear of suffocation. He was easily the tallest man I’d ever met, heavily built, with broad shoulders and a chest as big as a bear’s.

  “Gosh, you’re frightfully big,” I blurted before I could stop myself.

  He smiled. “Yes, I’ve been this way since I was a little older than you. Mrs. Tilling said you needed to see me about something.”

  “Yes,” I stammered. “I’m Kitty Winthrop, from Chilbury Manor, and I think I have found a”—I glanced around and hushed my breath—“a spy in our midst.”

  He smiled briefly before quickly coughing and adopting a more serious expression, sitting down on the floral sofa and beckoning me to sit on the armchair opposite. “Why don’t you tell me all about it.”

  “Well, when we were in Peasepotter Wood, Silvie—that’s our evacuee—and I saw a black marketeer called Old George, and he has a bush that he uses to store all the black-market goods he has, and he was there with Mr. Slater, the artist who moved into the house on Church Row next to Hattie, and I’m sure they were doing business, and then Silvie told me she keeps seeing Proggett, our butler, in Peasepotter Wood, too, and I saw him once there as well, and I wonder if he’s a spy or has anything to do with Mr. Slater and the black market, too.” I stopped and looked at my hands, clasped together on my skirt.

  “Goodness,” he said slowly, coughing slightly into his big, rolled-up hand. “You are definitely the type of open-eyed civilian we need around here!” He looked at me a moment, taking in my height and age. “Mrs. Tilling tells me you have your head screwed on properly, which means that you’ll take good care of what I’m about to say, won’t you?”

  I nodded briskly, quite pleased that Mrs. Tilling had said that I had my head screwed on, as I most definitely have.

  “I want you to carry on being observant wherever you go, but not to go out of your way to find things out. You have to trust me when I say that we have a number of highly trained people keeping an eye on this, and I don’t want you to put yourself in any danger. All right?”

  I nodded, disappointed.

  “Now, this is a very dangerous underworld we’re speaking about, so I need to have your word of honor not to tell a soul about this.”

  “Definitely,” I said crossly. “I am completely trustworthy.”

  “I’m certain that you are.” He smiled and his entire face lit up, making him look quite normal and even rather nice. “You know I have a girl of your age. You must be twelve?”

  “No,” I snapped. “I’m nearly fourteen.”

  “Of course you are! My daughter is twelve. She’s my youngest, staying with her aunt in Oxford with her two older sisters. I think she’d keep a secret, too, although she’d find it enormously hard work.” He let out a snort of a laugh, and I had to smile as he suddenly looked funny and friendly, like a big, unkempt St. Bernard or a beaten-up old teddy.

  “Can she come and visit sometime?” I asked.

  “Hopefully,” he said quietly. “I’d like them all to come one day and see where I live, this beautiful village with the rolling hills behind us.”

  “I never think of our village as being beautiful. I’ve lived here all my life, and it’s just home to me. Do you really think it is?”

  He paused, and I wondered if he’d heard me properly, but then at last he answered. “There’s a way of life here that I don’t believe any war can crush, that will endure long after we’re gone.” He snapped out of his thoughts and stood up. “I’ll let her know you want her to come. Her name is Alexandra,” he said, putting his giant hand forward to shake my small, slender one. “If you come across anything else, please tell me, Kitty. And don’t go to Peasepotter Wood. It’s dangerous. I know you’re a clever, mature sort of girl and can keep it to yourself, but especially don’t let Proggett suspect that you know anything, all right?”

  “Yes,” I said, pleased that finally someone was acknowledging me as mature.

  Mrs. Tilling came in and asked for a word with me in the kitchen. The Colonel bid me good night and asked Mrs. Tilling if he might use the telephone. I wondered if he was calling HQ to tell them what I’d reported. That I was a hero after all.

  Mrs. Tilling began clearing up the tea things. “Does your mother know you’re here?”

  “No.”

  She sighed and looked round at me. “I don’t know why you came to see Colonel Mallard tonight, and I’m not asking that you tell me, but please don’t mix yourself up in this war, Kitty.”

  “But we’re all mixed up in it, whether we like it or not.”

  “Some of us are, Kitty. Some of us are.” She looked at me with a sudden sadness in her eyes, and I could see how David worries her. She gave my shoulder a squeeze with her hand. “Now, off you go, and do please try to stay away from trouble.”

  As I went into the hall, I overheard Colonel Mallard on the telephone. “Yes, the exhaust is blown, and I need a replacement,” he was saying. “Immediately.” All my revelations and he was busy talking about his motorcar.

  Mrs. Tilling opened the front door for me, and we heard the distant hum of aircraft coming from the south. I stepped out onto the path to get a better look, closely followed by Mrs. Tilling, who stood behind me like a still squirrel listening for danger, Colonel Mallard silently joining us. The droning got much busier and messier, as if a lot of engines of different pitches were sputtering toward us. We watched the skyline behind the church tower, the moon suddenly appearing from behind dense cloud cover—a slim bright crescent, its silver light covering the side of the church with a heavenly gleam.

  And then we saw them. The spots grew distinct, first one Nazi bomber, then two behind, a precise, forward-moving mechanical arrow of doom.

  We watched in awe as they came toward us, a wave of Nazi destruction passing overhead. Had they overshot Dover? Were they heading for the Thames? The Colonel walked down to the road to better gauge their path.

  The siren started blaring loudly—the first time it’s gone off for a real air raid—shri
ll and frightening, like a ghost bellowing at us to get inside.

  “Let’s go to the cellar,” Mrs. Tilling said briskly, ushering us back into the house. “I think they’re heading over us, but best be on the safe side, especially since we have Kitty here.”

  She led the way through a slim door in the kitchen and down the narrow wooden staircase. As she switched the light on, I was relieved to see that it was decorated and cozy, not as grimy and insect-ridden as our cellar. Mrs. Tilling had put a worn-out rug in front of a small old settee and an armchair, complete with hand-embroidered cushions. A small bookshelf housed a clock, a dozen books, and a black metal box, which I hoped might be full of provisions. Rolled up to one side were some pillows and blankets, and I thought how comfortable it would be, curled up on the floor in such a snug little burrow.

  The Colonel squashed himself into the armchair and asked Mrs. Tilling if she had a pen and paper as he may as well catch up with his correspondence. She flustered around the bookshelf, found some, and gave them to him without a word. I wonder why she doesn’t like him. He seems rather nice to me.

  “Now, Kitty,” she said, “what do we have for you?” She bent down and looked over the bookcase. “Great Expectations? Have you read that? Or there’s Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, which may be a little too old for you.”

  Nothing’s too old for me, so I took the Anna Karenina from her and opened it on the first page. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. It was all too strange. Chilbury the center of unscrupulous dealings, Proggett a dangerous spy, Venetia’s Mr. Slater a black marketeer. Obviously it’s a good thing that the Colonel’s people are on top of all this, but I confess I was slightly upset that my one and only offering to help the war effort had been trounced in a short conversation.

  All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Our first air raid. Maybe the beginning of many, with bombs coming down on our houses, destroying everything we have. I listened hard, but the planes must have gone. And as the ticking of the clock dissolved into the background, I started feeling trapped by time itself. It was as if every moment had become both longer and shorter, more meaningful in case it’s our last, yet so fleeting and pointless. And all these moments join together to build my life, like it’s a patchwork quilt of different colors and shapes, good days and bad, that together make an uncomfortable, badly fitting whole.