Above the Bright Blue Sky

by Margaret Thornton

  Most importantly, after consulting with her husband, Cyril and Eliza Jenner had decided that they would still continue to own the property – at one time they had considered selling it – and that Lily and her children could live there…rent free! What this meant, in effect, was that Lily was to be the manageress of the draper’s shop, and she would be paid a weekly wage plus accommodation for herself and her family. The proceeds of the shop, of course, would belong to the Jenners, but Lily was more than happy to comply with this. She felt that all her dreams had come true at once.

  There was ample room in the living quarters for the four of them. As well as the living room, bedroom, kitchen – and even a small bathroom – on the first floor above the shop, there was an attic floor, hardly ever used until now except for storage, with two rooms that could be made into bedrooms for Maisie, and for Joanie and Jimmy.

  Furnishing the rooms was something of a problem, but Lily, with the help of Patience and Luke, and Rebecca and Archie Tremaine, was able to gather together the essential items; beds, chairs, table, wardrobe, dressing table and two easy chairs. Mr and Mrs Jenner were to leave a few pieces of furniture behind, and all the carpets and curtains. Some items were purchased, very reasonably, from a saleroom in Richmond, and other bits and pieces – kitchen utensils, crockery, cutlery and the like – were provided by various friends and neighbours. Lily, whilst working with the land girls, had become a very popular member of the community.

  In mid-September, when her broken arm had healed, her bruises had died back, and she was feeling altogether much fitter and stronger, Lily started work at the shop, gradually learning more each day from Eliza Jenner. But the family would not be going to live there until the middle of October. Cyril Jenner and a couple of his Home Guard pals were decorating the attic rooms and making them habitable, and moving the stock which was stored up there to the store room on the ground floor. There was also the Jenners’ new home, the little house at the far end of the town that they had purchased, to be put to rights.

  It was a busy time for everyone and Maisie could scarcely contain her excitement. All the same, she was pleased that she was still living at the rectory when Patience and Luke’s baby was born.

  It was on the last day of September, in the early hours of the morning, that Patience awoke with labour pains. Archie Tremaine had insisted, whatever time it was, day or night, that he must be called and he would drive Patience to the hospital in his car.

  Luke accompanied her into the ward, leaving her in the care of a nurse and doctor. They assured him, after examining her, that all would be well. He trusted them unreservedly; all the same, he felt that he had never prayed so hard as he did that morning for the safety and well-being of his beloved wife…and the child. Even now, at this late stage, it seemed almost impossible to believe that they were to have a child of their own.

  He returned home to the other three children who were still fast asleep in their beds. They were loth to go to school that day, but he insisted that they must. He went back to the hospital, cycling that time instead of riding in a car, and there he waited in an ante-room, along with another expectant father.

  It was mid-afternoon when the doctor came to call him. ‘Mr Fairchild, you may come and see your wife now. You have a fine healthy son… Congratulations to you, Reverend!’

  The baby, by no means a small one, but what one might call a ‘bouncing baby boy’, was cocooned in a blanket in his mother’s arms. He was a miracle of perfection to Luke. His eyes were closed, shielded by eyelids of mottled pink with tiny purplish veins, but Luke could see from the pale red-gold fluff, as delicate as thistledown, on the crown of his head, that he would have his mother’s auburn hair. He kissed her tenderly. ‘Thank you, my darling,’ he whispered. ‘This is the most wonderful thing you have ever done for me.’

  ‘Yes…and it’s a boy!’ She laughed quietly. ‘I think – secretly – that I hoped it would be a boy. Or else Tim might have been so disappointed.’

  ‘They will be thrilled, all of them,’ said Luke. ‘I’ll bring them to see you…when the doctor says you are allowed to have visitors. You must rest now, my dear. I’m sure it must have been…a tiring experience.’

  ‘That’s the very least of it,’ said Patience with a rueful grin. ‘But it was worth it. Yes, I am tired, but I’m looking forward to seeing the children. And they will be pleased to see…John, won’t they?’ They had already decided on the name. John, meaning Jehovah had favoured us, and also the name of the favourite disciple.

  ‘Yes…one of the most popular names of all time,’ said Luke. ‘But one of the best; I always think it sounds so strong and purposeful.’

  ‘Luke…would you mind very much if we gave him a second name?’ asked Patience.

  ‘No…I don’t think so. What is it?’

  ‘You know how I love the novels of Trollope, the Barchester stories? And Septimus Harding is a favourite character of mine. A true servant of God, I always thought, just like you are, Luke… And our baby was born in September, so it seems fitting.’

  ‘John…Septimus?’ said Luke. He pursed his lips. ‘A mite old-fashioned – and he might not thank us for it! – but, yes, it has a certain something about it… Yes, I think I like it. John Septimus he is then. John Septimus Fairchild, God bless him…’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  There was a ring and then what sounded like an urgent knock at the rectory door, one early evening during the second week of October. Patience had been home from hospital for only a few days, and they were all still getting used to the arrival of the youngest member of the family into their midst. It was amazing how much difference little John Septimus was making to the smooth running of the household. Patience, at that moment, was bathing the baby on the hearthrug downstairs, where it was warm, surrounded by a mountain of towels, baby clothes, nappies, talcum powder, baby lotion and feeding bottles, and watched by a trio of wide-eyed children.

  ‘You go, please, darling,’ she said to her husband, who, for once, was taking his ease in a comfortable chair. Neither of them had had much sleep for the past few nights with the baby still proving restless, although, ironically, he slept for most of the day. Luke had insisted on taking his turn with feeding the child. Patience had found that her supply of milk was limited and had had to be supplemented with the powdered variety.

  Luke opened the door to find Archie Tremaine standing there looking very distraught. ‘I have some bad news, I’m afraid, Luke,’ he said, ‘Very bad…’

  ‘Come in then and tell me.’ Luke ushered him inside, closing the door quickly as they had all learned to do with the blackout regulations. The ARP wardens were very quick off the mark with their constant cry of ‘Put that light out!’

  ‘Come into my study,’ he said, ‘Then we can talk in private… It’s Archie, darling,’ he called to his wife. ‘He’s come to tell me something.’

  ‘It’s Walter,’ said Archie, as soon as they entered the study. ‘Walter Nixon… He’s been killed.’

  ‘What?’ cried Luke. ‘But I thought… He’s not gone overseas, has he? I thought he was still down south somewhere, Salisbury way…’

  ‘So he is…was. It was just a training exercise; army manoeuvres, and it sounds as though he got in the way of a bullet. He was killed instantly.’

  ‘Ohh…’ Luke sank down into a chair, putting his head in his hands. ‘I don’t know what to say… It’s such a shock…’ He shook his head disbelievingly.

  ‘Aye, it’s that all right,’ replied Archie, sitting down opposite him. ‘Although I do believe there’s a fair number that gets killed during training as well as them on the battlefield. Ada’s in quite a state, as you can imagine. She got the telegram this afternoon, and she couldn’t understand it at all. She even thought it might be a mistake, and then the Second Lieutenant phoned her, long distance; they were so concerned about it. It was a tragic accident, he told her, but no one was to blame. She came straight round to tell Becky and me, then she had to go back
to tell little Doris. The girl’s heartbroken – I’ve just called there again now – and young Ted an’ all. And Joe’s in the RAF, as you know. Poor Ada…’

  ‘Yes, I’ll go round and see her, of course,’ said Luke.

  ‘I should wait till tomorrow if I were you, Luke,’ said Archie. ‘Give her a chance to come round a bit. What makes it worse, to my way of thinking, is that I don’t think they’d been getting on too well of late, Walter and his missus. Of course she was upset when he joined up, but there had been summat funny going on. It was all to do with our land girl, Priscilla; the one that was killed…’

  Luke raised his eyebrows, looking at the other man questioningly, but not wanting to react too much. As far as he knew, he, Luke, was the only one who knew, or had guessed at the truth, apart from Maisie. ‘Yes, that was a tragedy,’ he said carefully.

  ‘Aye, it was an’ all,’ Archie sighed, ‘and I don’t think Walter ever got over it. It’s my belief that there was something going on between him and that lass, and I think Ada knew it as well.’

  Luke nodded briefly, but non-committally. ‘Walter had an eye for a pretty face,’ he commented, ‘but then so have a lot of men of his age, without there being anything wrong going on. And Priscilla did work for him, as well as for you, didn’t she, Archie? He was responsible for her training, from what I remember, so I’m sure he must have been rather fond of her.’

  ‘I suspect there was rather more to it than that, but there’s no point in dwelling on it now. She’s dead, and so is Walter… God rest his soul. I don’t suppose we will ever know the truth about that poor girl’s death. I still think that it was one of those lads from the army camp; not her boyfriend, but another of ’em, maybe. She’d got herself rather a reputation as a flirt.’

  ‘And that’s most likely what it was between her and Walter,’ said Luke decidedly. ‘Nothing more than a flirtation.’ He had breathed an inward sigh of relief that Archie had not guessed at the truth. ‘But at the moment, our chief concern must be for Ada. I will call and see her in the morning… What about the funeral, I wonder? I suppose they will be sending…him home.’ He always tried not to refer to the dead person as ‘the body’.

  ‘I hadn’t thought about it, to be honest,’ said Archie. ‘Yes, I suppose with Walter being in the choir and a member of the church council there could be quite a lot of folk at the funeral.’

  ‘Mmm… We’ll see what Ada thinks about it,’ replied Luke. He was feeling that a big funeral with crowds of parishioners, and eulogies in praise of Walter might be too hypocritical for him, as the rector, to conduct. ‘Thank you for coming to tell me, Archie,’ he went on. ‘I’m still finding it difficult to understand that Walter should have been killed so…meaninglessly.’ Maybe it was no more than the man deserved, a tiny part of his mind was saying, but Luke could not believe in a God who would bring about retribution in such a way as that. ‘A very tragic accident…’ he said.

  Archie stood up. ‘I’d best get back. This has given Becky a shock an’ all. We’ve known Walter for many years. He was a good friend as well as being my tenant farmer.’

  ‘Yes…of course. So what will happen now?’

  ‘About the farm, you mean? Ada will stay there, of course. There would never be any question of her leaving, unless she wished to do so. She works just as hard as Walter did, in her own way, and Ted’s still there and the land girls. Becky and I will take care of Ada.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ said Luke, seeing him to the door. ‘Bless you, Archie. Rebecca’s all right is she, apart from…this?’

  ‘Yes; she has two women to help her to look after the land girls. They’ll be taking over from Lily when she leaves us. She’s already working in the shop, of course… Lily has proved to be a real godsend and we’ll miss her; but we’re so happy about the way things are turning out for her.’

  ‘Yes, and for Maisie as well,’ replied Luke. ‘She’s looking forward to being with her own family, although she’s besotted with our little John at the moment. Aren’t we all?’

  ‘Aye, there’s happiness as well as sadness, Luke. Isn’t it always so, all through life? Goodnight, then… Don’t put the light on; I can see my way out. God bless, Luke…’

  ‘Yes, God bless, Archie,’ replied the rector.

  ‘What did Archie want?’ asked Patience when he returned to the room. Baby John had been tucked up in his cot, but the other three children were still there.

  ‘Oh, something to do with the farm,’ replied Luke evasively. ‘I’ll tell you later, dear. It will keep.’ A tacit nod of his head conveyed to her that he would tell her when the rest of the family had gone to bed.

  Patience listened in stunned silence when he told her the news about Walter’s accidental death. ‘Ohh…’ she breathed. ‘Poor Ada…and poor Doris; she was so fond of her dad. But as far as Walter’s concerned, I can’t help feeling it might be providential, not…accidental.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ asked Luke, feeling himself start involuntarily at the shock of her words.

  Patience looked at him steadily for a few seconds. Then, ‘He killed that girl, didn’t he?’ she said quietly. ‘Priscilla…it was Walter, wasn’t it?’

  He could not lie to her. Very slowly he nodded his head. ‘Yes…he did. He confessed to me, but I would never have told you. I couldn’t tell you, darling. Not even you, you understand? But…how did you know? Did Maisie tell you?’

  ‘Maisie? No, of course not. Why?’ She stared at him incredulously. ‘How does Maisie…? She doesn’t know about it, does she?’

  ‘Yes, I am afraid she does. At least, she guessed at the truth…’ He told her about what the girl had overheard on the night of the choir practice, her disclosure to Luke, and then about Walter’s confession.

  ‘Oh…the poor little girl,’ sighed Patience. ‘Keeping that dreadful thing to herself, and her being a friend of Doris as well.’

  ‘She only guessed,’ said Luke, ‘and I never told her that Walter had actually confessed to me. I thought it was best if we tried to forget it, especially as he had gone and joined the army. But how did you know, if Maisie didn’t tell you?’

  ‘Don’t ask me how I knew, Luke. I just knew. Intuition, I suppose. I was watching Walter…and you. I know you very well, my darling, and I knew that something was troubling you.’

  Luke nodded. ‘But you surely don’t think that his death was…providential? That is what you said.’

  ‘No…maybe that is not quite what I meant. But perhaps it is for the best, for Walter. Fatalistic, you might say. It must have been a dreadful burden for him to bear.’

  ‘He wasn’t really a killer, my dear. It was not intentional… And I hope that Ada has never guessed at the truth. I will go and see her tomorrow…’

  Ada’s eyes were red-rimmed, and she was pale and looked very tired. She had clearly wept a lot and not slept a great deal. But she was manfully carrying on with her work; she was baking a batch of scones, she told Luke when he arrived. They sat down together at the kitchen table.

  ‘I could sit around and weep for evermore,’ she told him, ‘but what’s the use? Nothing’ll bring him back. I’ve got to carry on as normal, as much as I can, an’ I’ve tried to make sure that the kids do the same. Ted’s out in the fields somewhere and Doris has gone to school. She wasn’t for going, but Ted ran her there in the shooting-brake just for once. She’s got lots of friends, has our Doris; she’ll be all right. An’ we’ve sent word to our Joe. I reckon he’ll get compassionate leave for a day or two for the funeral.’

  ‘Yes…the funeral,’ said Luke. ‘It will be here, will it Ada? I assumed it would be.’

  She nodded. ‘Aye, this is Walter’s home, and St Bartholomew’s was such a big part of his life. They’re sending him back, after the post-mortem I suppose. I got this letter this morning, Luke. It’s from a fellow called Stan. He was Walter’s mate, he says, and he’s wrote to me to say what a shock it was… Here, read it for yerself, and tell me what you think…�
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  She produced a crumpled letter from her apron pocket and handed it to him. ‘It’s a bit hard to take it all in…’

  The letter was fairly brief, expressing condolences from a soldier called Stan Shuttleworth in the same platoon as Walter and obviously quite a close comrade.

  ‘We were on manoeuvres,’ he wrote, ‘and I saw what happened. It was uncanny really, but I want you to know that Walter didn’t suffer at all. He was killed instantly by a bullet fired at point blank range. It almost seemed as though he ran out deliberately in the line of fire, and the poor chap who fired the shot hadn’t a hope in hell of missing him.’ It went on to say how Walter would be missed and how he had often spoken about Ada and his sons and daughter.

  Luke read it in silence, but was at a loss, momentarily, as to how to express his thoughts to Ada. It appeared to him as though Walter had wanted to be killed and had brought about his demise deliberately. It was, possibly, not the most tactful thing for this man, Stan, to have told his friend’s widow, but it made sense to Luke at least.

  ‘Very strange,’ he commented, handing the letter back to Ada. ‘I don’t suppose we will ever know exactly what happened. It was a tragic accident, that much is certain… I know it is no consolation to you, Ada, but these fatalities during training exercises are by no means uncommon. It all seems senseless, I know. If he had been killed in action then maybe it would have been easier to understand.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right,’ said Ada. ‘I know it was an accident; at least it was for the poor chap who was responsible. He must be feeling an awful sense of guilt, but he’s no need to feel any self-reproach. You see…I believe that what this Stan says is just what happened.’ She tapped her finger against the letter. ‘Walter did it deliberately. He wanted to be killed.’

  Luke watched her keenly. ‘You really think…?’ he began.