by Maggie Hope
Ada deliberately kept her mind on the cottage as she waited for the horrible lump of chaotic feeling to go, willing the sickness in her stomach to settle. She went into the kitchen and looked around. Everything seemed all right, though there was a newspaper on the floor. Mechanically she picked it up and glanced at it, realising it was the paper she had bought on her way over to see Mr Johnson that day in the summer. She pulled a chair out, sat down at the kitchen table and opened out the newspaper.
The war news was old, of course; Ada only skimmed the headlines before turning the page, looking for anything to distract her thoughts and something did, immediately. It was the name Fenwick that caught her attention and she paused to read the article properly.
‘Fenwick Steelworks to step up production,’ it read. Fenwick Steelworks? That must be Johnny’s firm, Ada thought. She read on eagerly. ‘Mr Stephen Fenwick announced today that since the mill turned over to munitions they were now running at full capacity and were hoping to expand even further in the near future. “It behoves us all to play our part in bringing this war to a successful conclusion,” Mr Fenwick stated.’
Stephen Fenwick. Not Johnny, then. Ada stopped reading and sat back in the chair. But she was sure Johnny was probably still working in Middlesbrough. In the emotional state she was in after the confrontation with Tom, she yearned for Johnny, crying inside. Rising to her feet, she left the house, locking up after her and leaving the key with Mr Johnson’s neighbour. She walked up to the marketplace, carrying her bag, and caught a bus to Crossgate Hall.
I’ll write to Johnny, she decided, as she sat on the bus staring out of the window. Even if he’s not in Middlesbrough any more, surely his family will forward the letter. She felt quite cheered at the thought and began composing the letter in her head. She could remember the address, The Beeches, in Stockton Road, that was it. By the time she climbed down from the bus, Tom had been pushed into the background of her mind. She was going to start a new job in charge of this convalescent home and she was going to make a great success of it, she was determined she would. And she would write the letter to Johnny the same night, before she could change her mind.
As it happened, Johnny returned to Middlesbrough only a couple of days later; he was back in England on a week’s leave from the front. Riding up from King’s Cross on the train, he couldn’t help wondering what his reception would be when he got there. Oh, he didn’t doubt that Dinah would be glad to see him but he had mixed feelings about his nephews, Stephen and Arthur.
Still, he thought, as he changed trains at Darlington and crossed over to the Middlesbrough line, it was Dinah he wanted to see and if the boys didn’t like him coming they could lump it. He dismissed his nephews from his mind.
‘Johnny! How lovely to see you.’ His welcome from Dinah was all he could have hoped for: she flung her arms around him and sobbed with happiness.
‘Dinah, Dinah! Tears? What sort of a greeting is that after all this time?’
Dinah laughed shakily. ‘Oh, Johnny, I’m so happy. I was just thinking about you only this morning. I was just saying to Stephen – Oh, but come in, come into the drawing room, we’ll have some tea. There’s a good fire, you can have a warm, you must be cold.’
She led the way into the drawing room. ‘I’ll go and make the tea, I won’t be a tick. Just you make yourself comfortable, Johnny.’
Johnny raised his eyebrows. ‘But where’s Norah? Can’t she get the tea?’
‘Oh, Norah left ages ago, at the beginning of the war, it was.’
‘But can’t you get someone else?’
‘What, with girls able to earn so much more in the factories? Why, some of them are even on the buses. No, I’m all right, I’ve still got Cook, thank goodness. And between us, we manage. It probably won’t be for long, this dreadful war can’t go on for ever. Now, I won’t be long.’
Johnny stood before the fire while he waited for her, looking round at the familiar room with interest. It hadn’t changed a lot since he lived there himself, he noticed. But his brow furrowed as he considered Dinah: when he first saw her as she opened the door, he had hardly recognised her. She looked old and careworn, not at all like the old light-hearted Dinah he had known. He wondered about the cause. Surely, with the extra demand the war brought for steel, it couldn’t be the business? Well, he would do his best to find out before he went back to France, he decided as he heard Dinah returning.
‘Here I am. There now, that wasn’t long, was it?’
Johnny hurried to take the tray from her and put it down on a small occasional table by the side of his chair.
‘Such a lovely surprise, Johnny! Why didn’t you let me know you were coming? I would have got Cook to bake some fresh scones – these are yesterday’s. Still, they’ll still be nice with the strawberry jam. We can’t waste food nowadays, can we?’
Dinah sat back in her chair with her cup of tea in hand and beamed at him. ‘Now, tell me everything that has happened to you. Bye, lad, you’re a sight for sore eyes. I was so pleased to hear you were so successful in Canada. But what’s happening now, while you’re in the army? Surely you haven’t had to let it go?’
Johnny smiled fondly at her. ‘No, Dinah, it’s in capable hands. Very capable hands. I have a good manager. But tell me what’s been happening here. How is Stephen? And Arthur, has he joined the firm now?’
‘Stephen’s doing all right, the business too, though he doesn’t tell me much.’ Dinah sighed, looking into the fire. ‘I miss the old days, you know, when Fred would tell me all about his days at the mill. I felt I knew everyone there myself, he talked about them so much. But Stephen doesn’t; he doesn’t want to bother me, I suppose. There was a time, just before the war, when I thought the business wasn’t doing too well, and Stephen asked me to invest some of my capital in it. Which I was glad to do, of course, I knew it would be safe enough. And it’s doing well now, I know.’
It would be, Johnny thought grimly. Any steel mill which did badly in wartime deserved to go under. Still, he was glad, for Dinah’s sake if nothing else.
‘And Arthur?’ he probed gently.
‘Oh, Arthur, poor boy.’ Dinah smiled fondly, thinking of Arthur. ‘He’s not really cut out for business, though he joined Stephen in the office when the war came.’ Dinah glanced swiftly at Johnny in his Canadian Army uniform and added defensively, ‘Arthur’s better off in the business, some boys are too sensitive to make good soldiers. And the work at home is just as important. Stephen says so.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Johnny smiled at her and she relaxed. ‘And Pierce? Has Pierce left too?’ he went on.
‘Yes. Well, he and Stephen didn’t get on …’ Dinah didn’t finish the sentence and Johnny felt a flush of anger, for Pierce had been with the family for years. He must have had a serious disagreement with Stephen if it had forced him to leave. Johnny asked no more questions, thinking that perhaps it was best not to. But he was beginning to see the reasons for Dinah’s air of unhappiness. Things had indeed changed around here and the changes were not for the best. Instead he began to reminisce about Fred, and Dinah joined in eagerly; there was nothing and no one she would rather talk about than her beloved Fred. They passed a pleasant hour or two in this way and before they knew it, Stephen and Arthur were back from the office. Even before they came into the room, they could be heard bickering loudly as they entered the house, and Dinah looked apprehensively at the door.
Stephen came into the sitting room, scowling fiercely. ‘Mother,’ he began, then noticed his uncle sitting there. ‘Oh, hello, Uncle John,’ he said.
‘Hello, Stephen, Arthur,’ Johnny answered quietly. He watched his younger nephew as he followed Stephen into the room with a feeling of dismay. Though he was hardly into his twenties, Arthur had a dissipated air about him: his eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks blotchy, and his lower lip stuck out petulantly as he crossed to his mother and gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek.
‘How are you, Arthur?’ she asked him anxiously. �
�You seem a little pale, I hope you’re not sickening for anything.’
Stephen snorted. ‘A monumental hangover, more likely. Do you know it was eleven o’clock before he condescended to come in to work this morning? How on earth I’m supposed to run the business with him messing up everything he does, do you know what –’
‘Don’t listen to him, Mother. I can’t help it if I suffer from these confounded migraines. How can I be expected to work when I’m ill?’
‘Oh, Stephen, perhaps you’re too hard on him,’ Dinah put in anxiously. ‘He’s still only a boy, he’s still growing, I’m sure he is.’ She looked from one to the other, helplessly. ‘Please don’t argue, boys, you know how it upsets me. Look, isn’t it lovely to have Johnny for a visit? I thought we could have a grand time together. He’s only got a few days, we should make the most of it before he has to go back to the front.’
Stephen looked sourly at his uncle. ‘You’re going back to war, are you? You’ll be one of the glory boys, I suppose, a hero for going over to France and sitting about most of the time. That’s what it’s like, I’ve heard all about it. While we at home are working all the hours God sends, doing without things, having all the worry and getting white feathers for our pains. Where would you be without us? That’s what I’d like to know.’
Johnny was so surprised he grinned in disbelief. Briefly his thoughts went back to the last few weeks in the trenches, the mud and the stink, the sheer horror of going over the top. He looked across at Dinah to see what she thought of Stephen’s outburst, but his sister-in-law was biting her lip, looking distressed.
‘You haven’t got a white feather, Stephen? Surely not, after all you are doing –’
‘No, of course not, Mother!’ Stephen interrupted her. ‘But I’ve heard of men getting them, good men too.’
Johnny decided not to argue with Stephen, it wouldn’t do any good. Instead he changed the subject for he was interested in hearing about the business.
‘I hear the works are doing well, Stephen,’ he said.
‘Did you think they wouldn’t? I suppose you thought I wouldn’t be able to manage without you. Well, I proved you wrong, didn’t I?’
Johnny thought fleetingly of Dinah saying she had had to put money into the business before the war. ‘I’m pleased for you, Stephen, very pleased,’ he said mildly. For the moment he had had all he could take of his nephews, Stephen in particular. He was glad they would be out of the house for most of the time he was in Middlesbrough.
‘If you don’t mind, Dinah,’ he said, rising to his feet, ‘I think I’ll just go up to my room. The same one, is it?’
‘The spare room, do you mean?’ There was a slight sneer in Stephen’s voice.
‘Yes, of course, it won’t be my room now, not after all this time,’ Johnny answered evenly.
‘Yes, it is, Johnny.’ Dinah gave Stephen a reproachful glance before answering Johnny. ‘I will always think of it as your room. The bed is made up, I always leave it made up, all ready for you. I’ll put a hot-water bottle in it later.’
‘Oh, don’t bother, it’ll be fine. Heaven, in fact, after the trenches,’ he couldn’t help adding to Stephen as he left the room.
He sighed as he unpacked his bag in the large square bedroom he had had since he was a boy. If every evening was going to be like this, he thought, his leave was going to be very trying indeed. No wonder Dinah was so unhappy.
Johnny’s views were reinforced later in the evening when he was about to leave his room to go down to dinner. He started to open his door when he heard Arthur’s voice close by and hurriedly he closed it again.
‘Mother,’ Arthur was saying plaintively, ‘I’m a bit short and I’m going out for the evening. Could you let me have a tenner?’
And I thought Arthur was unwell, Johnny thought grimly. Oh, Fred, perhaps it’s just as well you died when you did. If you were to come back now, what would you think?
Dinah was the only one who joined Johnny in the dining room at eight o’clock that evening. Stephen was off somewhere on business, or so his mother said. And no doubt Arthur had got his tenner, Johnny surmised.
‘Oh, Johnny, I forgot to tell you in all the excitement when you came,’ Dinah greeted him, ‘this came for you.’ She handed him a letter and he looked at it in surprise – who would be writing to him here? And then he saw the handwriting and a wave of nostalgia hit him; he stared at the Durham postmark, remembering. Dinah was talking but he hardly heard what she was saying.
‘It came yesterday, I was saying to Stephen he should post it on to you. But he said he was too busy to bother – poor boy, he does have a lot of work. And it’s just as well, isn’t it?’ She looked up at him in surprise as he didn’t answer. He was staring at the envelope with a stricken look on his face.
‘Johnny?’ she persisted. ‘Johnny, aren’t you going to open it? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘What?’ Her anxious voice drew Johnny’s attention at last. ‘Oh yes, of course. I’ll open it after dinner.’
Johnny put the letter away in the pocket of his jacket. All through dinner he was conscious of its presence there and as soon as possible made an excuse to go up to his room to open it. Somehow, he couldn’t bear to open it in front of anyone, not even Dinah.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ada soon settled into her new position at the Hall. She delighted in her tiny flat at the very top of the house, which had a small sitting room and a separate bedroom. There was even a tiny kitchen where she could boil her own kettle on a gas ring and cook simple meals if she didn’t want to eat with the rest of the staff. She felt she could retire to the flat in her off-duty hours and get completely away from the wards, though in fact she was usually on call in case of emergencies. And she found she liked being in charge. The doctors were visiting ones from the hospital, as the patients were convalescents, so she was in complete control.
One evening early in 1916, Ada went upstairs with a feeling of great relief. The day had been quite hectic for even though they only had beds for twenty-five patients, she had been working all day with the help of only two young VADs and was exhausted. She had been glad when her undernurse, Nurse Simpson had returned from her off-duty and taken over from her. There were still the rounds to do at ten o’clock, but until then she was free.
Ada took off her cap and apron and loosened her hair from its hairpins, letting it fall over her shoulders. She ran her fingers through it and rubbed her forehead just between her eyes, where a pulse throbbed painfully. She was tired, that was all, she thought and went to put the kettle on the gas ring. A cup of tea was what she needed, and then she would have a rest for a couple of hours.
She was carrying her cup of tea back into the sitting room when there was a knock at her door, disturbing her blessed quiet. Ada sighed, what was it now? she wondered.
‘Come in!’
Millie, the housemaid, opened the door and came in. ‘There’s a gentleman to see you, Matron, a soldier,’ she said.
Ada’s heart dropped. Not Tom, let it not be Tom, she prayed, not now, she was too tired to deal with Tom. She hadn’t seen him or heard from him since that traumatic time in the autumn and had presumed he had gone back to France. Putting down her cup, she looked in the glass above the fireplace. Pulling her hair into some sort of shape at the back of her head, she secured it with dolly grips.
‘Tell him to come up, please, Millie,’ she said.
‘He’s here, Matron,’ the girl answered.
Ada turned quickly to see a tall man in khaki step through the door. Her eyes opened wide with shock, she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She stood there, mouth open; Millie went out and closed the door and still she felt unable to move.
Johnny! It was Johnny! He took off his cap and gave her the same lopsided smile that she remembered so well from long ago, his red hair glinting in the light from the lamps almost as brightly as the buttons on his uniform.
‘Aren’t you pleased to see me, Lor
inda?’
The sound of his voice speaking her given name, an echo from the past, galvanised her into action. Forgetting everything – her tiredness, everything – she stepped forward to throw herself into his arms, hesitating at the last minute and gazing up at his face. Oh yes, she wasn’t dreaming, it was Johnny’s face; the same green-flecked eyes, the same freckled forehead, slightly marked where he had removed his cap.
‘Oh, Johnny. Oh, Johnny!’ Ada was incapable of saying anything else.
Johnny took her in his arms, holding her close. Lifting her off her feet he buried his face in her hair, breathing in the fragrance of her. His lips moved to her cheek and found it wet with tears. Groaning, he found her lips and both he and Ada were lost to everything but each other, here, in a room at the top of an old house in the Durham countryside. Rain spattered on the windowpanes and there were muffled noises from the lower regions of the Hall but neither Johnny nor Ada was aware of them.
He picked her up and carried her to the sofa and they sat there, arms wrapped round each other, murmuring softly to one another. Talking and explanations could come later; now was the time for giving themselves up to the pure joy of being alone together.
It seemed to Ada like only an instant later when another knock at the door penetrated through the haze of happiness which enveloped her.
‘Yes, what is it?’ she called.
‘Time for your rounds, Matron,’ Nurse Simpson reminded her.
‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
Ada disengaged herself from Johnny’s arms and, rising, tidied herself up and put on her cap and apron. Johnny lay back against the cushions and watched her, a gentle smile hovering around his lips.
‘You won’t be long?’
Ada bent and dropped a kiss on his cheek. His arms went up to her again but she swiftly evaded them, backing away from him towards the door, chuckling as she did so.
‘I’ll only be half an hour, I promise.’