by Pam Weaver
‘That’s lovely,’ said Janet. ‘What a great mother you’ve got – giving you your first lipstick.’
Tears sprang into Shirley’s eyes.
‘Oh, Shirley,’ said Janet, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry.’
‘No, it’s all right,’ said Shirley. ‘It just that I can’t bear to think that if she came here, I missed her. Why didn’t he say something?’
‘She could have come, I suppose,’ Janet said cautiously. ‘You had all those warm winter clothes, remember?’
‘But they came by post, didn’t they?’ said Shirley. ‘I opened the parcel on the kitchen table . . .’ Her voice trailed off and they stared at each other in bewilderment.
‘I bet he took them out of the case and wrapped them in a brown-paper parcel himself,’ cried Janet.
‘So she was here, wasn’t she!’ cried Shirley. ‘My mother came to see us and he sent her away and then pretended the stuff she’d brought us came by post.’
‘You don’t know that for sure,’ said Janet.
‘What other explanation is there?’ said Shirley. She had never felt more frustrated. ‘I can’t believe it! Oh, he’s so horrible, that man. I hate him. I hate him.’ She sat on the bed and burst into tears.
Janet had her arm round Shirley’s shoulders as Tom came into the room carrying the baby’s crib. He stood watching in bewilderment. ‘Don’t cry, Shirl,’ he said. ‘I don’t like it when you cry.’
Hearing his voice, Shirley pulled herself together. ‘It’s all right,’ she gulped. ‘I’m all right now.’
Janet slid her hand into the pocket on the other side of the suitcase. To her surprise, she pulled out three pieces of paper. ‘Look at this,’ she murmured. ‘Three postal orders, all made out to you.’
‘Then she definitely came,’ said Shirley.
‘Who came, Shirley?’ Tom wanted to know.
She daren’t tell him that their mother had been here and that he’d not been allowed to see her. He’d be devastated. ‘A friend,’ she smiled. ‘A friend came with these.’ She studied the date on the Post Office stamp. All were sent before Christmas. Tom lumbered out of the room and went downstairs.
‘At least you’ve got the money now,’ said Janet.
‘But why?’ Shirley asked Janet. ‘Why did he do it?’
‘To keep you both here, I suppose,’ she said.
Shirley frowned. She wished Mr Oliver was here right now and then she could have it out with him, but she quickly realized that if he was here, they wouldn’t even be in this room. She stood to her feet to carry on. All Mr Oliver’s clothes were in a pile on the floor, and much as they’d like to get rid of them, they couldn’t. In the end, they decided to open the trunk he’d used as a bedside table and shove everything in there. When they threw the lid up, they found some lovely bed linen.
‘We might as well use this on the beds,’ said Janet. ‘Shame to waste it all.’
Having pushed all trace of Gilbert Oliver into the trunk, they spread a little lavender polish on the chest of drawers and the room smelled a whole lot nicer. Later in the day, Shirley picked a few early daffodils from the orchard and put them in a vase. They looked nice on the chest of drawers. Now at last, the room was ready for Janet and Lucy.
‘One thing I’d really like to do,’ said Shirley, ‘is to take down that awful mantrap in the kitchen.’
‘Good idea,’ said Janet. ‘Let’s do it now.’
They went downstairs, and after a cup of tea, tackled the trap. It was screwed so tightly to the wall it took all their strength and still they couldn’t manage to dislodge it. At one point, Shirley dropped the screwdriver and they had to move the chest of drawers to pick it up. There was a drawer on the side that they hadn’t noticed before. When Janet opened it, she gasped. There was a large money tin inside, and when she turned the key in the lock, they were dazzled by pound notes.
‘Golly,’ said Shirley. ‘How much do you think is there?’
Janet grinned. ‘Enough for us to pay proper wages and to buy whatever we need to keep this farm going.’
‘Do you really think you should?’ Shirley asked cautiously.
‘When I married Gil,’ said Janet, ‘he made me a promise: “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” I reckon I’m perfectly entitled to use this money for the farm, don’t you?’
Shirley grinned. ‘I guess you’re right.’
She was itching to get into Elizabeth’s room, but because the farm work had to take precedence, they could only do one room at a time.
They had a bit of a scare when the village bobby came up on his bicycle to tell Janet that Gilbert had already appeared before the magistrates on a summons for adulterating the milk. They hadn’t expected the case to be heard so soon.
‘He was fined twenty pounds,’ PC Duffy told them, ‘with ten pounds in costs. He got off lightly in my opinion. He should have been sent down.’
‘Are you telling me he’s out of prison?’ Janet squeaked.
‘No,’ said PC Duffy, turning his bicycle round. He was a nice man, quite good-looking. He’d been called up when the war started, but he had damaged his right index finger as a boy and because the joint was locked, it wouldn’t bend. ‘Not much use when you’re trying to fire a gun,’ he’d joked.
‘He’s still in custody regarding the firearms charges,’ he went on. ‘They’ve transferred him to Lewes Prison on remand. He’ll be back in the magistrates’ court next week. Ten o’clock on Tuesday.’
As he cycled away, Janet looked at Shirley. ‘For one awful moment, I thought he was going to say . . .’
‘So did I,’ said Shirley. ‘Perhaps we’d better leave changing the other rooms until we know for sure.’
Janet nodded. ‘I think it might be best.’
The girls on the ward were subdued. Tina had died in the early hours of the morning. She had no relatives to be with her, so the night nurses had waved the rules and Florrie had taken a turn at sitting by her bedside. As it transpired, the nurse was with her when it happened. Florrie was unbelievably upset. She couldn’t bear the thought that Tina’s lovely girls would never know their mother, but at the same time she thanked God that they were far too young to understand their terrible loss. They would, she supposed, be told at a later date that their mother had died. As for Tina herself, she’d miss their first day at school, all their birthday parties and Christmases, their first day at work, and she’d never be the mother of the bride – oh, it was too unbelievably awful, too sad.
‘Come on now, Florrie,’ said Jill as Florrie wept. ‘Don’t go making yourself bad again. Tina wouldn’t want that.’
Florrie nodded miserably and blew her nose. But perhaps it wasn’t just for Tina that she cried. What about all her own wasted days and the separation from Tom and Shirley? She missed the corner shop and her dear friends. Much as she complained about it, she wanted to smell the river again and serve tobacco to the dockers. She wanted to chat to Len. Florrie looked up to see a nurse bagging Tina’s stuff. A small, flesh-coloured leg stuck out of the top of the bag and Florrie remembered the rag dolls. Tina had so wanted to send them to her girls.
‘Excuse me. Those dolls,’ Florrie asked, ‘can I have them?’
‘They’re only half finished,’ said the nurse.
‘I know,’ said Florrie. ‘She was making them for her girls. I’d like to finish them for her.’
The nurse gave her a sympathetic look. ‘The one good thing that’s come out of this,’ she said cautiously, ‘is that her children are still young enough to find a good home. They’ll be adopted. They won’t even know about the dolls.’
‘I know,’ said Florrie, her throat becoming tight again, ‘but they might be allowed to have a keepsake from their real mother, eh?’
The nurse hesitated for a moment, then handed her the bag. ‘Don’t be disappointed if the authorities won’t allow it.’
Florrie nodded. In the days that lay ahead, it helped to be sewing buttons on for eyes and ma
king felt shoes. She’d found Tina’s photograph at the bottom of the bag. Florrie kept it on her locker, and every now and then she showed the girls the progress she had made. Her stitching wasn’t as good as Tina’s, but everything was being done with love.
* * *
A week before the holiday, Shirley sat the exam. She took a two-hour paper in the morning and a two-and-a-half-hour paper in the afternoon. When she emerged from the classroom, she was exhausted but quietly confident.
Easter came and went. The weather was quite good, even though it was only March. Bank-holiday Monday saw record numbers of day-trippers on the beaches of Worthing. Things seemed to have settled down as far as the war was concerned, and there was a lot less talk of bombing and gas attacks. People still carried their gas-mask box everywhere they went, but these days it was more likely to contain their sandwiches for lunch. Even on Oliver’s Farm, there was a period of peace and quiet. True to his word, Mr Telford had found them a farm labourer. Vincent Watts was in his late forties, and although he had worked on the land all his life, he had fallen on hard times. Two years before, he’d got his leg caught in a baling machine. He was lucky, so they told him, that he hadn’t lost it altogether, but his recovery had taken so long that his employer had to let him go. Shirley recognized him as the man who, along with the landlord of the Red Lion, had helped her when Tom got stuck in the culvert.
Before he came, Janet got Tom and Seth to put a better door on Shirley and Tom’s old room, one that reached to the floor. Tom whitewashed the walls, and Granny Roberts had given them ‘a stick or two of furniture’ to create a habitable room. It was very humble, but Vince was delighted and Shirley moved upstairs.
One of the first things Vince had them doing, apart from the usual tasks on the farm, was chitting potatoes. The second earlies should have been put into the ground by mid-March, but although they were a bit late, Vince said it would be all right if they got them in now. The maincrop potatoes would take twenty weeks to mature, but they would normally be ready to lift in late August through to October. The work would be labour-intensive because they would have to bank up the rows as the shoots appeared and keep them well watered and pest-free, but they all agreed it would be worth it. The whole crop could be lifted and sold to give them a firm financial footing to take them through the winter.
Janet had decided not to go to Lewes Assizes for the trial, but with Vince in place as the day drew nearer, she began to change her mind. Everyone was convinced that Gilbert would be sent to prison, but she wanted to see it for herself. Of course, if the court was lenient, she would have to leave the farm straight away. As Mr Telford suggested, Janet had written to Gilbert suggesting that he make bank funds available to her, but she held out little hope of getting any. It was a bit embarrassing explaining her concerns to Mr Telford, but he’d seemed unperturbed.
‘You can get a loan using the harvest as collateral,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit of a risk, but I think with my recommendation, you’ll be all right.’ It was a pity that the money in the tin only covered existing debts and a wage for Vince and Seth.
Her head told her it would be better not to go to court just in case it all went wrong, but she dreaded Gilbert walking back in unannounced even more. At least, she told herself, if she saw him acquitted, she would be prepared. She was well aware that her thoughts were confused, but that’s the way it was.
Janet arranged for Lucy to stay with Granny Roberts for the day. She had expressed some of her breast milk and put it into a baby’s bottle, and she told Granny Roberts that if she was delayed, she was to give Lucy some watered-down evaporated milk. After seeing Lucy settled, Janet caught the early train and arrived in Lewes at nine-thirty.
It turned out that the court, a grey stone Georgian-style building right in the centre of town, was easy to find. Janet ran up the steps and went through the middle door of three. She and the rest of the people waiting to go in entered the public gallery just before ten. The room itself was very impressive. Lined with dark wooden panels, it had a church-like appearance, but the vaulted glass ceiling gave it a touch of the theatrical. Soon after they’d all sat down, the prisoner was called up from the cells into the dock, which was in the centre of the courtroom. Gilbert, looking dishevelled and unkempt, looked around and then spotted her up in the gallery. Their eyes locked, but neither of them showed any hint of recognition. A surge of anger filled Janet’s chest. What a fool she’d been. She had certainly jumped from the frying pan into the fire when she had married him. Since he’d been gone, she’d realized that he’d treated her little better than the animals on his farm. Grateful not to have ended up on the streets, she’d made excuses for him for far too long. If anyone remarked on his grumpy moods, she’d say he was still mourning the death of his first wife, or that he was simply desperate to save his farm. She’d spent half her married life apologizing and explaining that he didn’t really mean what he’d just done or said, but not any more. All that had changed the moment he’d tried to harm her child.
Someone called out, ‘All rise,’ which was followed by a low rumble as everyone in the courtroom got to their feet. The judge, Mr Justice Brooks, entered through a door to the side of his chair on the bench and bowed his head. As he sat down so did everyone else.
They began with introductions. Mr John Flowers, KC, neatly turned out in wig and gown, and the bespectacled, much younger Mr Brown, who were both instructed by Messrs Dell and Loader, were speaking for the prosecution. Mr Grayson, KC, a rather tired-looking man wearing a moth-eaten wig, appeared on behalf of Mr Gilbert Oliver. In his opening speech, Mr Flowers told the court that when Mr Bradshaw (on hearing his name, Janet suddenly realized she’d never known the name of the first man from the ministry) arrived at the farm, Mr Oliver had been abusive and aggressive in his behaviour.
At this point, Gil jumped to his feet and shouted, ‘They wants to take away my farm, that’s why.’
The judge stopped him mid-flow and remonstrated with him. ‘Prisoner at the bar, you will have plenty of time to put your case later on,’ he said. ‘I would ask you to sit down and wait until your counsel instructs you.’
Gilbert sat down and Mr Flowers continued. ‘Mr Oliver, having produced a shotgun, fired it twice, so traumatizing Mr Bradshaw—’
Gilbert was up again. ‘It were an accident. The bloody dog bit me.’
The judge banged his gavel. ‘Mr Oliver, I have already explained that this is not the time for you to speak. Please do not interrupt King’s Counsel again.
Gilbert glowered and sat down once more. Mr Flowers resumed his speech. ‘The shotgun was fired twice, so traumatizing Mr Bradshaw that he has been unable to return to his place of work.’ Gilbert mumbled something rude, but everyone ignored him.
When Mr Bray, Gilbert’s barrister, rose to give his opening speech, it wasn’t long before Gilbert was interrupting him as well. ‘Tell them they’ve got no right to take away my place. My family have farmed that land for six generations.’
The judge banged his gavel. ‘One more interruption, Mr Oliver, and I shall send you back to the cells and add contempt of court to your list of charges.’
‘You call this justice, you dried-up old prune?’ Gilbert yelled, incensed. ‘It seems to me that it’s one law for the haves and another for the have-nots.’
A minute or two later, Gilbert was on his way back to the cells, shouting obscenities and resisting the two burly officers who manhandled him back downstairs. As the judge adjourned the proceedings for a fifteen-minute break, Janet could still hear her husband’s protests as he kicked the cell door.
CHAPTER 20
While they had a fifteen-minute break, Janet took the opportunity to go to the toilet. She felt like a bag of nerves. PC Duffy was talking to another police officer in the corridor. When he saw her, he nodded.
‘Mrs Oliver,’ he said stiffly.
‘PC Duffy,’ she replied, guessing that he wasn’t more friendly because he was with his superior.
The case
continued without Gilbert. In fact, it seemed to be moving along a lot more quickly now that he wasn’t constantly interrupting. The jury were sent out late in the afternoon, and less than an hour later, they were back. Gilbert was brought up from the cells into the dock.
‘How do you find the prisoner? Guilty or not guilty?’
Janet closed her eyes, knowing that from this moment on, whichever way it went, one word or two words would alter the course of her life forever.
‘Not guilty.’
Janet gasped audibly and gathered her things. A murmur in the courtroom grew louder. The judge banged his gavel.
‘Mr Oliver,’ he said, ‘you have been found not guilty of the firearms offences and under normal circumstances would be free to go.’ Janet hovered by the door. There was a pregnant pause, and then he continued. ‘However, I take a very dim view of your conduct in this courtroom. You have a blatant disregard for authority, and your belligerent attitude has shown your contempt for this court. For this reason, I sentence you to three months in prison.’
Gilbert went berserk. As he leaned over the dock shouting obscenities to the judge, the usher called, ‘All rise’ and, gathering his papers, the judge prepared to leave the courtroom. Quick as a flash, Gilbert turned his back and undid his belt. There was an audible gasp in the gallery as his trousers fell and he presented his bare bottom to the bench. As Gilbert bent forward, there was a loud report and a foul odour filled the room. The judge, half out of his chair, sat back down and banged his gavel.
‘And for that gross insult, Mr Oliver, I add another three months to your sentence.’ There was a slight pause, and then he added, ‘With hard labour.’
Gilbert was manhandled back into his trousers and dragged down to the cells by the same two burly officers who had taken him down last time. The judge then left the courtroom. Most people stood in silent and shocked surprise. No one had expected that.