“Everything is perfectly all right as far as I can see,” says Bryan at last in puzzled tones. “The engine ought to start. I’ll crank it again.”
He cranks it again, but nothing happens.
By this time it is a quarter to three and the situation is desperate. We decide to walk. Bryan seizes his suitcase and sets off down the road, I follow with his coat, his golf clubs and his handbag. No car passes, going our way, but several cars speed by rapidly in the other direction. We pound along in silence, for neither of us has breath for speech. Bryan’s suitcase is heavy, his brow is wet with perspiration.
“We can’t do it!” I cry at last. “It’s three now—we can’t do it.”
“Yes, we can,” grunts Bryan. “We’re nearly there—but the train is signalled . . .”
He breaks into a run. We reach the station breathless. The train is actually starting to move when Bryan leaps in and the door is slammed behind him.
There has been no time to say good-bye, of course. I am left standing upon the platform gasping like a fish.
“Ye shouldn’t run it so fine,” says the station-master reproachfully. “It’s folks like you makes trains late. If I’d not happened to see ye coming and held the train ye’d have missed it for sure. It’s an express, too.”
This is the last straw. The injustice of it is almost more than I can bear. “I didn’t,” I cry. “I mean it wasn’t my fault. I’m always too soon.”
“Ye weren’t too soon today,” says the station-master.
I am too dejected to explain, besides the station-master does not wait for an explanation, he has more important things to do than to bandy words with a foolish woman who has delayed an express. I sit down on a bench for a few minutes to recover myself and then set forth on foot to recover the car.
The car is standing exactly as we left it, which is not surprising, of course. When I see it—and not before—I realize that I should have telephoned from the station and asked Todd to come to the rescue. I am completely stranded, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I am too depressed to care what happens to me.
It begins to rain gently, so I open the door and get in and, more from habit than anything else, I press the self-starter . . .
The engine immediately springs to life and purrs away merrily.
“You brute!” I exclaim. “I suppose you’ll run home quite smoothly. You really arc the most disagreeable car I have ever met,” and so saying I let in the clutch, turn at a convenient gate and head homeward to Tocher House.
By this time the rain is descending in sheets and I am feeling quite as wet and dejected as the weather. I am in the mood when one forgets one’s blessings and counts one’s troubles, when nothing seems good and the world seems grey and drab. I have a son, but he has gone away. I have a husband, but I have not seen him for months. It may be years before I see Tim, it certainly will be years before we can settle down to a reasonably peaceful life. What is the use of being married when you can’t be together? It is misery, no less. All very well for Tony to say think of the future—I do think of it most of the time but you can’t live on hope forever. There are times—and this is one of them—when the savour goes out of life, when you lose heart, when you feel you can’t go on, when you would give everything you possess for one glimpse of the person you love . . .
Thinking these thoughts and choking a little over a most uncomfortable lump which has suddenly arisen in my throat, I turn in at the Tocher gates, chug up the avenue and stop with a jerk at the door.
Erica is waiting for me; she rushes down the steps with a piece of paper in her hand. “It’s just come!” she exclaims. “A cable from Cairo. I took it down over the phone—but it doesn’t seem to make sense.”
“From Tim!” I cry. “Is it from Tim? Is he all right?”
“No,” says Erica. “It’s from somebody called Max—”
“But I don’t know anybody called Max!”
She hands me the paper. “I took it down most carefully,” she says. “It’s absolute nonsense, I’m afraid—unless it’s some sort of code.”
“We haven’t a code—it isn’t allowed,” I reply as I seize it from her.
The message reads as follows:
MAX MEET SATURDAY FORTY NINE DAYS MIST
To me the message is perfectly clear and my spirits soar with a bound. They soar so rapidly from the depths of despair to the heights of bliss that I almost faint with joy.
“Oh, how marvellous!” I exclaim. “I shall have to go—you won’t mind will you—I’ll come back afterwards, of course.”
“But who is Max?” asks Erica, gazing at me in bewilderment. “And why forty-nine days mist?”
“It isn’t Max,” I tell her. “Max is Todd’s pigeon.”
“Todd’s pigeon?”
“It means Tim is flying home. It couldn’t mean anything else.”
“Couldn’t it?”
“No, of course not. He wants me to meet him on Saturday at the Forty Club—he’s got nine days leave!”
“Mist?” murmurs Erica feebly.
“That is rather difficult,” I admit, laughing joyfully. “That is a sort of code. It means a thousand and one salutations from Tim. You couldn’t know that, could you? The rest of the message is perfectly clear.”
“As clear as Christie,” agrees Erica with heavy sarcasm.
THE END
About The Author
Born in Edinburgh in 1892, Dorothy Emily Stevenson came from a distinguished Scottish family, her father being David Alan Stevenson, the lighthouse engineer, first cousin to Robert Louis Stevenson.
In 1916 she married Major James Reid Peploe (nephew to the artist Samuel Peploe). After the First World War they lived near Glasgow and brought up two sons and a daughter. Dorothy wrote her first novel in the 1920’s, and by the 1930’s was a prolific bestseller, ultimately selling more than seven million books in her career. Among her many bestselling novels was the series featuring the popular “Mrs. Tim”, the wife of a British Army officer. The author often returned to Scotland and Scottish themes in her romantic, witty and well-observed novels.
During the Second World War Dorothy Stevenson moved with her husband to Moffat in Scotland. It was here that most of her subsequent works were written. D.E. Stevenson died in Moffat in 1973.
Fiction by D.E. Stevenson
Published by Dean Street Press
Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941)
Mrs. Tim Gets a Job (1947)
Mrs. Tim Flies Home (1952)
Smouldering Fire (1935)*
Spring Magic (1942)
Other Titles
Jean Erskine’s Secret (written c. 1917, first published 2013)
Peter West (1923)
Emily Dennistoun (written c. 1920s, first published 2011)
Mrs. Tim of the Regiment (1932)*
Golden Days (1934)*
Miss Buncle’s Book (1934)
Divorced from Reality (1935, aka Miss Dean’s Dilemma, aka The Young Clementina)
Miss Buncle Married (1936)
The Empty World (1936, aka A World in Spell)
The Story of Rosabelle Shaw (1937)
The Fair Miss Fortune (written c. 1938, first published 2011)
The Baker’s Daughter (1938, aka Miss Bun the Baker’s Daughter)
Green Money (1939, aka The Green Money)
Rochester’s Wife (1940)
The English Air (1940)
Crooked Adam (1942)
Celia’s House (1943)
The Two Mrs Abbotts (1943)
Listening Valley (1944)
The Four Graces (1946)
Kate Hardy (1947)
Young Mrs Savage (1948)
Vittoria Cottage (1949)
Music in the Hills (1950)
Winter and Rough Weather (1951, aka Shoulder the Sky)
Five Windows (1953)
Charlotte Fairlie (1954, aka The Enchanted Isle, aka Blow the Wind Southerly)
Amberwell (1955)
Summerhills (1956)
The Tall Stranger (1957)
Anna and Her Daughters (1958)
Still Glides the Stream (1959)
The Musgraves (1960)
Bel Lamington (1961)
Fletcher’s End (1962)
The Blue Sapphire (1963)
Katherine Wentworth (1964)
Katherine’s Marriage (1965, aka The Marriage of Katherine)
The House on the Cliff (1966)
Sarah Morris Remembers (1967)
Sarah’s Cottage (1968)
Gerald and Elizabeth (1969)
House of the Deer (1970)
Portrait of Saskia (collection of early writings, published 2011)
Found in the Attic (collection of early writings, published 2013)
* see Explanatory Notes
Explanatory Notes
MRS. TIM
Mrs. Tim of the Regiment, the first appearance of Mrs. Tim in the literary world, was published by Jonathan Cape in 1932. That edition, however, contained only the first half of the book currently available from Bloomsbury under the same title. The second half was originally published, as Golden Days, by Herbert Jenkins in 1934. Together, those two books contain Mrs. Tim’s diaries for the first six months of the same year.
Subsequently, D.E. Stevenson regained the rights to the two books, and her new publisher, Collins, reissued them in the U.K. as a single volume under the title Mrs. Tim (1941), reprinted several times as late as 1992. In the U.S., however, the combined book appeared as Mrs. Tim of the Regiment, and has generally retained that title, though a 1973 reprint used the title Mrs. Tim Christie. Adding to the confusion, large print and audiobook editions of Golden Days have also appeared in recent years.
Fortunately no such title confusions exist with the subsequent Mrs. Tim titles—Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941), Mrs. Tim Gets a Job (1947), and Mrs. Tim Flies Home (1952)—and Dean Street Press is delighted to make these long-out-of-print volumes of the series available again, along with two more of Stevenson’s most loved novels, Smouldering Fire (1935) and Spring Magic (1942).
SMOULDERING FIRE
Smouldering Fire was first published in the U.K. in 1935 and in the U.S. in 1938. Until now, those were the only complete editions of the book. All later reprints, both hardcover and paperback, have been heavily abridged, with entire chapters as well as occasional passages throughout the novel cut from the text. For our new edition, Dean Street Press has followed the text of the first U.K. edition, and we are proud to be producing the first complete, unabridged edition of Smouldering Fire in eighty years.
FURROWED MIDDLEBROW
FM1. A Footman for the Peacock (1940) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM2. Evenfield (1942) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM3. A Harp in Lowndes Square (1936) ... RACHEL FERGUSON
FM4. A Chelsea Concerto (1959) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM5. The Dancing Bear (1954) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM6. A House on the Rhine (1955) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM7. Thalia (1957) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM8. The Fledgeling (1958) ... FRANCES FAVIELL
FM9. Bewildering Cares (1940) ... WINIFRED PECK
FM10. Tom Tiddler’s Ground (1941) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM11. Begin Again (1936) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM12. Company in the Evening (1944) ... URSULA ORANGE
FM13. The Late Mrs Prioleau (1946) ... MONICA TINDALL
FM14. Bramton Wick (1952) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM15. Landscape in Sunlight (1953) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM16. The Native Heath (1954) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM17. Seaview House (1955) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM18. A Winter Away (1957) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM19. The Mingham Air (1960) ... ELIZABETH FAIR
FM20. The Lark (1922) ... E. NESBIT
FM21. Smouldering Fire (1935) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM22. Spring Magic (1942) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM23. Mrs. Tim Carries On (1941) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM24. Mrs. Tim Gets a Job (1947) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM25. Mrs. Tim Flies Home (1952) ... D.E. STEVENSON
FM26. Alice (1950) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT
FM27. Henry (1950) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT
FM28. Mrs. Martell (1953) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT
FM29. Cecil (1962) ... ELIZABETH ELIOT
D.E. Stevenson
Mrs. Tim Flies Home
Sometimes it is difficult to see where one’s duty lies (and especially difficult for people with a husband in one part of the world and children in another) but Tim and I decided that I ought to go home.
Hester Christie, the delightful heroine last met in Mrs. Tim Gets a Job, has spent a blissful 18 months living in Kenya where husband Tim is posted. But now it's back to England to be with her two nearly grown children. She rents a house near the village of Old Quinings in England’s North Country, and plans a quiet summer with the children near the inn owned by her beloved former maid Annie and her husband.
But things are never quiet for long with Mrs Tim, and she must navigate curious neighbors, a dishonest landlady, and a troublesome travel companion who makes an unwelcome appearance in Old Quinings, not to mention a bit of intrigue and—as usual for Hester—a bit of matchmaking for young lovers.
Mrs. Tim Flies Home, first published in 1952, concludes D.E. Stevenson’s much-loved Mrs. Tim series. Furrowed Middlebrow and Dean Street Press have also reprinted Mrs. Tim Carries On and Mrs. Tim Gets a Job. This new edition features an introduction by Alexander McCall Smith.
“Another charming romance . . . Strongly recommended for pleasurable reading.” Edinburgh Evening News
FM25
Part I
Flying Above the Clouds
Wednesday, 13th June
The beginning of a journey by air is the moment when you emerge from the air-station and see before you a large flat plain and your aeroplane waiting for you. There it stands, a huge ungainly monster, with a silver body and wings and two enormous wheels. The fact that it possesses both wheels and wings is symbolic, showing it to be a monster of earth and air—just as a frog is a monster of earth and water. (We call the frog an amphibian but as far as I know there is no proper word for a creature having seizin of earth and air.)
If you are at all like me, your first thought on beholding the silver monster will be: Can it possibly fly? Can that man-made contraption soar into the air like a bird? Your second will be that it looks extremely unsafe—a gimcrack sort of monster—and (again if you are like me) you will feel a strange reluctance to climb the ladder which is placed so conveniently against the monster’s side and enter the small dark aperture in its ribs; but if you are reluctant to embark you are even more reluctant to brand yourself a coward (and, incidentally, you have made all your plans and paid the earth for your ticket) so you exclaim with false assurance, “Ah, there’s my plane!” and march forward to your fate.
All these curious ideas sweep through my mind in a moment, and this reminds me that a drowning man sees his whole life pass before his eyes before he sinks to the bottom for the last time (though how we know that it does so I cannot imagine). In some ways I am like that drowning man, that man who will clutch at a straw, but it is not my whole life which passes before my eyes—merely the last eighteen months, which I have spent in Kenya living in the lap of luxury and doing my best to sustain the part of Colonel’s Wife with reasonable dignity. This last eighteen months has been a happy time—a time of sunshine and gaiety—and now I am leaving it all behind. I am leaving the large airy bungalow with the chintz curtains, leaving the garden with its gorgeous array of tropical plants; worst of all, I am leaving Tim.
Tim has come to see me off, of course, and at this very moment is walking with me towards the plane. Suddenly he grabs my arm and says in beseeching accents, “Hester, don’t go!”
“Don’t go!” I echo, standing still and looking at him in amazement.
“I don’t want you to go in that thing,” explains Tim in rapid undertones. “I
mean, not alone. It wouldn’t be so bad if I were coming too. Of course I’ve flown a lot myself and thought nothing of it, but that’s quite different. I mean it’s a bit terrifying at first—and anyhow the children don’t need you nearly as much as I do. Bryan is grown up.”
“But, Tim, we talked it all over and agreed—”
“It was crazy,” he declares. “I must have been mad to agree. Don’t go, Hester.”
“Tim! I’ve got to go!”
“But I can’t bear it!” cries Tim.
During this impassioned appeal the other passengers are streaming past, climbing the silver steps and disappearing one by one into the monster’s belly.
“But it’s all fixed!” I exclaim. “You know quite well I must go. It’s all fixed.”
“We can unfix it,” Tim declares. “It isn’t too late.”
But of course it is too late for at this moment a large smiling steward approaches and takes my suitcase from Tim’s unwilling hand. “It’s all right, Colonel,” says the smiling steward. “I’ve kept a good seat for Mrs. Christie. I’m afraid I must ask you to go back, sir, or I’ll be getting into trouble. Only passengers are allowed on the airstrip.”
“Yes,” says Tim. “Yes, we don’t want to get you into trouble, but the fact is Mrs. Christie has changed her mind and—”
“Good-bye, Tim, darling!” I cry, throwing my arms round his neck and kissing him.
“Good-bye,” says Tim miserably. “You’ll cable from Rome—don’t forget to cable from Rome. This is hell!” he adds in a choked voice as he squeezes my hand into pulp. “I never realised—well—good-bye.”
He salutes and walks away smartly, while I, wearing a false smile, climb up the ladder and enter the plane.
I know quite well what Tim is feeling and can sympathise with him profoundly, for I have experienced the same misery a hundred times. I have said good-bye to Tim and watched him being whirled away to the ends of the earth in planes or trains or ships . . . but, looking back down the years of our married life, I cannot remember a single occasion upon which Tim saw me off and was left behind. I have always suspected it was a good deal worse for the one who was left behind and now I know. Poor Tim! But he will be all right, I tell myself firmly. People will be kind to him—for people who dwell in the far-flung outposts of the British Empire stand together and bear one another’s burdens. Yes, I tell myself (as I accept the seat which the steward has reserved for me) yes, Tim will be well looked after; it’s right for me to go home. . . . And the reflection that I am doing my duty comforts me considerably for, if by any chance one should be killed in the execution of one’s duty, it would be a noble end.
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