War Brides

by Helen Bryan

  “Ta very much,” she said. She closed her eyes as the sweetness melted thickly across her tongue. She smiled in spite of herself.

  She looked very pretty, smiling like that, Bernie thought. “That’s better,” he said, watching a rim of chocolate form round her top lip. He watched as her tongue crept out to lick it off. He wondered what it would be like to lick it off for her, then even kiss her like he had seen some of the men kissing the dance hall hostesses. The thought of it sent a jolt through him. He drew in his breath so sharply that he startled her.

  Her eyes flew open. “Chocolate’s one of my favorite fings,” she said. “It’s on my list.”

  “Your what?”

  “I’ve got a list of fings I like to fink about, when I go to sleep. Nice fings. Lace ’andkerchiefs. Penny buns. Silk stockin’s.”

  “Oh.” He thought about this for a minute. “Are people on it?”

  “Of course! Mum and Vi’let always was, but lately the boys are too, and yesterday I decided even Agnes is.”

  “You’d be on my list, if I ’ad one.” He leaned closer, unable to resist touching the chocolate shadow on her lower lip with his forefinger.

  Suddenly Elsie realized the lad was breathing funny. There was a strange look on his face and that face was now very close to hers. Quickly she jumped off the tomb. “Blimey! Nearly gone teatime. I ’ave to run—got to lay the tea things or Mrs. Gifford’ll box me ears again for bein’ late. I’ll wash your ’andkerchief and give it back.”

  He wanted to tell her to keep it but, just in time, realized it would be an excuse to see her again. “Ta. Shall I see you ’ere then? Tomorrow?”

  “I don’t mind.” She ran for the big house across the green, her little dark-clad figure merging with the dusk. The apron flapped white until she disappeared though a door in the garden wall.

  “Well!” said Bernie. “Well I never!”

  9.

  Crowmarsh Priors,

  Late November 1939

  It was a gray November morning, rain beating dismally against the windows, and the morning room was cold. As usual, Elsie had neglected to lay and light the fire. Muriel Marchmont sat glumly at her desk, marvelling that she, who had never had children, now had three girls on her hands—three girls proving to be Very Awkward Indeed. Girls these days no longer did as they were told, and she was quite exhausted with trying to do her duty by the thankless creatures.

  First there was poor, jilted Alice, whose mother refused to stir off her sofa all day and ordered Alice about until the girl was as limp as a tea towel. All the useful tips Muriel had given Alice about how to make more of herself had been ignored—no wonder the young vicar took little notice of her. Mrs. Osbourne, dreadful, selfish woman, was too busy complaining about her health to spare a thought for her own daughter. Like far too many men, in Muriel’s opinion, the late vicar had married beneath him for the sake of a pretty face.

  Her goddaughter was even more vexing. Frances had been sent to stay at Glebe House because, lacking a mother, she needed female supervision and, her father had stressed, a firm hand: she had been running wild in London with a fast set of unsuitable young men. However, Tudor Falconleigh had failed to explain how Muriel was supposed to chaperone Frances, who now spent most of her time with Hugo de Balfort and his friends at Gracecourt Hall, or, Lady Marchmont suspected, gadding about to nightclubs in Brighton. She had tried to put her foot down, but Frances did much as she pleased.

  This trouble with Elsie was the last straw!

  Pen in hand and a fresh sheet of monogrammed cream writing paper before her, Muriel struggled to master her irritation and compose her note to Penelope Fairfax.

  My Dear Penelope,

  I regret to inform you that despite our best efforts for the past three months, Elsie Pigeon falls far short of what is desired in a housemaid. So much so, in fact, that I fear the arrangement must end at once. At first there were the matters of Elsie’s intestinal worms and lice—though naturally Mrs. Gifford dealt with those with customary efficiency. But despite her efforts to train Elsie, things have gone from bad to worse.

  The girl cannot learn to dust, polish, clean the grates, shine the knocker, make a bed, or sweep a carpet properly. She cannot even wash a teacup without breaking it. She eats nothing but bread and jam, sometimes until she is ill, and cries in the night for “Mum” and “Vilet” who I am told is the youngest of her sisters. However, since we are at war, Mrs. Gifford and I felt it our duty to make the best of things.

  Little did we imagine there could be worse to come. Elsie has acquired a follower. She has been keeping company with a most undesirable young man, billeted in the village with Constable Barrows—in lieu, I understand, of being sent to prison. Elsie insists he is a friend from the dreadful part of London she calls home, but all Mrs. Gifford has been able to discover is that he is an orphan brought up among criminals. The young man seems to come and go at will, disappearing for days at a time, and if we are all murdered in our beds I suppose we can thank the authorities instead of the Germans.

  So I regret to say that, unless you can make other arrangements for her, Elsie will be on the London train tomorrow.

  Yours ever,

  Muriel Marchmont

  As she sealed the envelope there was a clatter of heels on the stairs, then Frances breezed into the morning room in a cloud of Vol de Nuit, cozy in a ribbon-trimmed tweed coat and skirt, her fur draped round her shoulders. She was holding a hat trimmed with blue velvet flowers that matched her eyes. Rather soigné for a rainy Thursday in Crowmarsh Priors, thought her godmother sourly.

  “I say, Aunt Muriel, I went looking for a biscuit just now and found Elsie crying her eyes out in the scullery. She says she’s being sent home. Whatever for, poor little mouse?” Frances looked into the mirror above the empty fireplace and adjusted her hat to an angle over one eye.

  “If you got up in time for breakfast you’d have no need of biscuits, my dear. ‘Poor little mouse’ indeed! Elsie, I’m sorry to say, is on the verge of ruin with some boy who would be in an approved school if the police had any sense. The housekeeper made a shocking discovery in her room.”

  “Gracious! What?”

  “Silk stockings if you must know, chocolates. Scent!”

  Frances turned her head this way and that checking the effect of the hat. It would never do for Elsie to leave. She and Elsie were partners in crime. Elsie crept bravely past a snoring Mrs. Gifford to unlock the front door on the nights Frances had gone to Brighton and sneaked in before dawn. Frances returned the favor by helping Elsie to escape on errands to the village when they spotted her young man lurking near the laurel bush. She had given Elsie a becoming cardigan, two lace handkerchiefs, a bottle of lavender water far too insipid for herself, and some face powder. Then, prompted by a new glow in Elsie’s face and an unaccustomed pang of responsibility, she had advised her not to let the lad she was keeping company with take liberties. Elsie had winked and said, “Course not! I’d never! But I lets ’im fink he might, next time!”

  “Very clever, Elsie darling, but do be careful…”

  “Oh! Um, I gave the stockings and things to Elsie,” Frances said quickly. “She’s, um, been doing extra things for me, errands, laundering and mending, you know.”

  “I had no idea Elsie was capable of anything so useful.” Muriel’s voice was dry.

  Frances tweaked the little veil and pinned her hat. “Well, she’s ever so good with my washing. And I gave her the stockings because she admired them so. I’ve loads, you know, and one of Hugo’s friends gave me an absolutely monstrous box of chocolates. Naturally I can’t eat them if I’m to keep my figure, and you mustn’t eat them with your blood pressure, Aunt Muriel. And I don’t think the boy can be as bad as all that. Elsie knew him in London, he was brought up by his uncle.”

  “That’s not the half of it, according to Mrs. Gifford,” said her godmother darkly.

  Frances snapped open her handbag and rummaged for her lipstick. “In fact, I t
hink he must be a good sort, really. Because he’s doing war work. Although it must be rather hush-hush, because—”

  “War work? Preposterous! Whatever gave you such an idea?”

  “Because Elsie said he goes off from time to time with what she calls toffs. I thought it was nonsense, then when I was out for a walk last Sunday I passed Constable Barrows’s cottage and was surprised to see a motor car pull up, just like the one from the Admiralty that calls for Father. I even recognized the driver, though it seemed odd he wasn’t in uniform and pretended not to see me when I waved. I assumed they must want Constable Barrows for something, though why they would send an official car for a country constable I can’t imagine unless the Germans really are due here any minute. Anyway, the boy came out, got in, and was driven away. There was another man in the backseat. Curious, isn’t it?”

  “From what I hear that boy’s the dregs of the criminal classes and the girl’s a useless baggage. The sooner she’s sent packing the better.”

  “Oh, please, Aunt Muriel! Elsie’s a pet, and it would be too dreadful to send her back to the slum they live in. You mustn’t! Her mother, younger brothers, and sisters were evacuated up north, her older brothers have enlisted in the navy, so she would be alone at home with her father. Elsie says he drinks and disappears for days at a time. Surely it’s your duty to…to Penelope Fairfax, keep her here for a bit longer.”

  Muriel Marchmont frowned. Poor Penelope was saddled with that dreadful daughter-in-law, and Muriel did sympathize.

  Frances rushed on: “When we had drinks at the Fairfaxes’ last time Richard was home on leave, his wife told me Elsie’s made friends with the foreign girl billeted there.” Frances rooted in her handbag again. “And Elsie says she’s applied to become a Land Girl now that Hugo and Leander have agreed to take them on at the home farm—the men have joined up or been conscripted. They turned her down at first because Elsie’s so young, but she begged them to ask Penelope about it, and they did. Penelope’s promised to see to it when she has time. Sending Elsie back to London now will only add to the WVS’s problems. Penelope said she had a frightful time persuading people like the Pigeons to evacuate their children in the first place, and now they’re tearing their hair out because so many are coming back. People don’t believe there’ll be any poison-gas attacks.”

  Muriel threw up her hands. On top of everything else, war was so unsettling for everyone. Normal life had been turned upside down. Girls doing men’s work, driving tractors and baling hay! And now there was a foreign child bride who didn’t speak English, with a baby in tow, living in the village. So many people had poured into England and no one was bothering to find out if they were Bolsheviks or Jews or anything else dangerous. When Sir Humphrey Marchmont had been alive he and his wife had seen a great deal of Archibald Ramsay, MP, and had sympathized with the stand his Nordic League had taken on the need to resist the Jewish stranglehold on northern Europe. It was ridiculous of the authorities to discourage the League, she believed.

  Now the war had come, she felt a twinge of pity for the women with their ragged head scarves and big-eyed children she saw on newsreels, driven out of their homes by the Nazis with only the clothes they stood up in, but they had undoubtedly brought it on themselves. And she didn’t see why foreigners should be allowed to disrupt the domestic lives of people who lived quietly in the country. Particularly when she had shouldered the burden of responsibility for girls whose mothers had manifestly shirked theirs.

  She thought of Alice with approval. At least one girl understood duty. If only Frances would stop gadding about and follow Alice’s good example. She could learn such a lot from her.

  “I’m just off to Gracecourt, Aunt Muriel.” Frances yawned, then looked at her little watch. “Bridge, luncheon. Hugo’s friends have mostly gone, but we can make up two tables. Leander says it amuses him to have young people around.” She pulled a lipstick out of her bag and applied it carefully in the mirror. The prospect of the day before her was not very exciting. In fact, it was exactly like a great many other days, but she couldn’t think of any other way of passing the time.

  Muriel Marchmont watched disapprovingly as her goddaughter tucked the pretty leather bag under her arm and drew on her pale kid gloves, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. It came from a foreign education. She had been expelled from a series of sound boarding schools in Devon and Wiltshire chosen personally by her godmother. Finally, and against her advice, Tudor Falconleigh had sent Frances off to a French finishing school for three years. Frances had stuck it out because he had promised her a shopping spree in Paris if she did. She had returned to England in time for her debut with a near-perfect command of French and equipped with an extravagant supply of day frocks, ball gowns, shoes, and fetching hats that had cost her father a fortune.

  Soon, however, she was showing signs that she had inherited from her French mother the dangerous something that turned men’s heads, the same unfortunate something that had bewitched stolid Tudor Falconleigh into his too-brief marriage. It had gotten Frances into scrapes in London with all the wrong sorts of men, and now it was having a similar effect on the men in the village, from the vicar to Leander de Balfort. Muriel intended telling Tudor bluntly that their only hope was to get Frances decently married off, before she was utterly disgraced and no one would have her.

  She couldn’t help noticing, however, that, compared to Frances in her fetching outfits, Alice looked dowdier than ever in her jumpers, pinnies, and too-tight head scarves. She sighed, thinking of the luncheon party at Gracecourt to which she had taken Alice. It had not been a success. Alice had been seated between Hugo and a drawling fellow with a title and a monocle. She had been wearing too much rouge and a drab frock so awful that Muriel had suspected it had once belonged to Mrs. Osbourne. After three nervously downed glasses of sherry, Alice had grown red in the face and talked a little too loudly about her late father’s interest in Sussex history, then told a long, rambling story about a gang of smugglers and their underground tunnels.

  The titled man had grown bored with the impromptu history lesson and turned to the vivacious girl on his left, leaving Hugo to struggle on with Alice and her history. Hugo, bless him, had pretended to be interested, which encouraged Alice to talk steadily until they left. Muriel had been silent with despair all the way home.

  Alice, she had to admit, lacked sparkle. Frances, on the other hand, had far too much. How unfair life was. It occurred to her that Frances was just the person to take Alice in hand. Surely she could work a little change in Alice’s appearance. Nothing too drastic—just enough to open Oliver’s eyes.

  “You should stop gadding about and take on some war work, Frances. Perhaps give dear Alice Osbourne a hand. She hardly stops to draw breath, though one wonders why she has quite so much thrust upon her, poor thing. Teaching, clothing drives, knitting circles, first aid, not to mention nursing that tiresome mother. She ought to be married. That nice young Oliver Hammet should marry too. So suitable, really, a vicar’s daughter becoming a vicar’s wife. But he…if only Alice looked a little more…a lily in need of gilding, so to speak. Perhaps you could smarten her up, my dear? Oliver would be bound to come to his senses.”

  To Frances’s relief, Hugo’s roadster pulled into the drive at Glebe House. “Oh, I know you wanted me to be friends with Alice and I tried, but truly, she’s too, too tedious! Can’t stick her. Must dash, Aunt Muriel.” Frances blew her a kiss and disappeared. The car pulled out of the drive, gravel crunching.

  That Hugo was paying Frances what in Lady Marchmont’s day had been called “marked attentions” cheered her somewhat, and took her mind off Alice. Such attentions indicated a proposal was in the offing, in her experience. Marriage would steady them both. Hugo would buckle down to his responsibilities on the estate and Frances would soon be occupied with their children. She ought to write Tudor at once to let him know which way the wind was blowing. To avoid delays once Hugo popped the question, Tudor’s lawyers might as well loo
k at the question of marriage settlements now. Leander was far too impractical to take the initiative there, but Hugo needed money, and Muriel thought how fortunate it was that Frances would inherit a considerable fortune on her marriage. Leander had never lived up to the responsibilities of the estate, which had been impoverished when he inherited, thanks to his grandfather’s gambling and a lifetime’s devotion to a series of actresses.

  Leander had married well, but instead of plowing his late wife’s huge fortune sensibly back into the estate, he had chosen to indulge his aesthetic instincts instead. He had squandered endless sums on flamboyant projects at Gracecourt—hence the Chinese pagoda, the deer park stocked with small Japanese deer that had soon died, the tennis courts, and the latest, a dramatic scheme to redesign a Capability Brown lake as a series of shallow, modern rectangular pools to the specifications of a flamboyant, self-styled “horticultural artiste” with a velvet waistcoat and a foreign accent. Before the shooting luncheon Leander had taken his guests to see them. “Too thrillingly exotic! So modern!” everyone gushed and gave the “artiste” a little round of applause. One of the illustrated papers had even taken photographs for a feature article.

  To Muriel Marchmont they just looked big, flat, and strange. “So unnecessary!” she had muttered under her breath. She had noticed that the house was in a shocking state. She had spotted broken panes in the leaded windows, woodworm in the Tudor linen-fold panelling, and the long gallery ceiling sagged under patches of damp. The drawing room curtains were decidedly moth-eaten and there were pale rectangles on the walls where paintings had hung—sold, she imagined, to pay for Leander’s ill-conceived schemes and Hugo’s fees at Eton and Oxford, then his Grand Tour.

  All most unwise, in Muriel Marchmont’s opinion. The de Balforts had been at Crowmarsh Priors for centuries, and the business of Leander’s life, or perhaps Hugo’s now, was to ensure they remained there. It was Hugo’s plain duty to marry without wasting any more time and to take an English wife with money and breeding, produce a son at once, and pull the estate together before taxes ate everything up.