A Family's Duty

by Maggie Bennett

  Enid Temple saw that she would have to be firm. She knew the real reason for Doreen’s reluctance to return to her parents; it had been such a pleasure to see the girl’s shining eyes and listen to her happy chatter when Philip was nearby, and he had not discouraged her – on the contrary they had gone on walks together, and he had remarked on how much better she was looking; the unfortunate business over the birth and adoption of her baby daughter no longer seemed to trouble her. Even so, Enid reproached herself for allowing Doreen to become so involved with a man old enough to be her father, yet wondered if in fact they might be right for each other.

  ‘Doreen will be going home on Friday, Philip,’ she told her nephew, watching for his reaction. ‘She’s not very happy about it, but it’s probably for the best.’

  He nodded, and decided to be frank with his aunt. ‘It’s true that she and I have enjoyed each other’s company, Aunt Enid,’ he said awkwardly. ‘I have felt rather like a father to her, and because she’s so sweet and childlike, the thought has occurred to me that one day – er, I might offer her—’

  ‘I’ve wondered the same, Philip, but the best way of finding out is to let her go back to her family and see where her best interests lie. You’ll have to stand back and wait.’

  He promised to follow her advice, but neither of them anticipated Doreen’s near-hysterical behaviour on the day her father came to collect her.

  ‘Let me say goodbye to Philip!’ she cried. ‘Where is he, Miss Temple? Why isn’t he here to say goodbye to me?’

  Enid could not hide her embarrassment when Philip suddenly appeared, against her considered advice, and Doreen clung to him as if she were drowning. Only when he quietly promised to visit her soon did she relax her grip on his arm. Rob Nuttall glared at him, and quickly led Doreen out to the pony-trap he had brought for her and her belongings.

  ‘Now, Doreen my dear, you’re not to upset your mother and make her ill again,’ he warned. ‘She wants you at home with her, and you’re to be the good girl you used to be.’

  Doreen let her mother kiss and hug her, and kissed her grandfather. Rob had heard Saville’s whispered promise to visit Doreen, and prepared himself for it. On a morning two days later, when Doreen and her mother had gone shopping, there was a ring at the doorbell. Rob caught Tom Munday’s eye, and went to answer it. Philip found himself faced by Munday and Nuttall who stood at the doorway, and did not invite him in.

  ‘Oh, good morning, Mr Nuttall – Mr Munday,’ he said with determined good humour. ‘If you have no objection, I’d like to see Miss Nuttall for a few minutes.’

  ‘Well, you can’t,’ replied Rob very definitely. ‘I’m not having my daughter pestered by a man more than twice her age, taking advantage of her – her vulnerability.’ He had been practising the word, which came out correctly and full of disapproval.

  ‘I can assure you, Mr Nuttall, I have no intention of taking advantage of Miss Nuttall in any way,’ said Philip, reddening.

  ‘And we have no intention of taking that risk,’ said Tom Munday sternly. ‘We don’t want you coming round here again, d’you understand?’

  ‘I – I’m sorry, believe me, I have every respect for her,’ stammered Philip, dismayed by their united anger.

  ‘Yes, stay away from this house, Saville,’ said Rob Nuttall, coldly contemptuous. ‘Go back and make an ass of yourself with Lady Neville!’

  The door was slammed in his face, and Philip winced at the insult. Was this how North Camp regarded him – a fool infatuated by Lady Neville? He had no choice but to retrace his steps, burning with a shame he had not felt until this encounter with the men in Doreen Nuttall’s blameless life.

  At the rectory there was sudden consternation. Joan Kennard was getting the children ready for church when there came the sound of voices overhead, coming from the Allinghams’ parlour. Alan was ready to leave for Morning Service, and wondered if he should venture upstairs. Lester was shouting, and Mrs Allingham was crying, though few words could be distinguished. While Alan hesitated, the rector came halfway down the stairs.

  ‘Kennard, are you there? Look, we’ve got a bit of trouble, I’m afraid. I shan’t be able to attend this morning, so you’ll have to go ahead and take the service without me.’

  ‘Very well, Mr Allingham.’ The two families had never got round to using Christian names. ‘Can I be of any help?’

  ‘Only to take Divine Service, nothing else. No need to make a great fuss about it,’ said the older man, as if his curate was being deliberately irritating. ‘And keep the children away.’

  Alan did not reply, seeing that the four children were always kept away from the Allinghams. He nodded and turned back, wondering if Lester had made a confession to his parents.

  ‘I shall have to make some sort of excuse to the congregation,’ he said to Joan. ‘No doubt we shall hear all in due course.’

  There was a certain amount of murmuring in church when Alan explained that the rector was unable to conduct the service, and as he stood at the church door while the people filed out, he was pleased to greet the Nuttalls; Grace and Doreen were holding hands, and Grace smiled up at him.

  ‘I’m so happy to have her home again, Mr Kennard,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a joy to see you both,’ he replied, noting that she looked warily towards the Nevilles, as if hoping for a reconciliation there soon. He also noticed Doreen’s eyes looking round for the organist, but knew that Philip had hastily escaped by a small, ancient door behind the organ. Philip had not confided in him, but he guessed there must be a connection with Doreen Nuttall. Miss Temple’s polite ‘Good morning, Mr Kennard’ gave nothing away.

  Later in the day Alan was told by the rector that Lester had gone back to the RAF.

  ‘He missed the activity of service life, Kennard,’ he said. ‘Not much going on in North Camp for a young man of his nature. It has upset Mrs Allingham, naturally, but we’ve had to let him go.’

  No details were given of the furious row that had erupted between Lester and his parents, and the verbal shaft he had hurled at them – that if he had to spend one more day in bloody North Camp, he’d go nuts – nor that he had referred to Alan Kennard as a pompous Holy Joe who got on his nerves.

  The events taking place across the Channel continued to bring hope and fear: every family with a son, husband, brother or any relative or friend involved in the liberation of Europe dreaded the news as much as they eagerly awaited it. One morning Valerie Pearson received a letter from Mr Richardson of Thomas and Gibson’s, informing her that his son had been sent home with a bullet in his left shoulder, and that he had been transferred to Everham General from a military hospital in Aldershot. Mr Richardson asked her – almost begged her – to visit John whose morale was very low, his father said. Valerie was of course sorry to hear this, and although she was disinclined to revive a relationship with John, she felt that a bedside chat with a man in a hospital bed could hardly be thought of as compromising, and only involved a short walk from The Limes.

  ‘Hello, John.’

  ‘Valerie! Oh, Valerie, how good of you to come! It’s wonderful to see you – sit down, sit down, tell me how you are – and your mother. It seems such ages since—’

  ‘Your father told me you were in here, John,’ she said, careful to show that she had come as a friend rather than a girlfriend. He looked tired, and had lost weight. His left shoulder was swathed in a bandage that went around his chest and upper arm, and he wore a sling.

  ‘I’ve brought you some flowers from the garden,’ she said, putting down a bunch of chrysanthemums. ‘I’ll go and find a vase to put them in.’

  ‘I shall look at them and think of you and your kindness, Valerie,’ he said with a break in his voice. ‘It’s been a hard slog all day and every day in France, and then I got this’ – he indicated his bandaged shoulder – ‘and now I’m washed up here, missing all the fun!’ He grimaced, and she realised he spoke ironically.

  ‘Your father’s very thankful to kno
w that you’re out of the danger zone, John,’ she said, taking hold of his outstretched left hand. ‘And so am I.’

  ‘You’re so sweet, Valerie,’ he muttered hoarsely, ‘and I haven’t appreciated you as I should – as I do now.’

  ‘All right, John, all right,’ she said gently, and passed him a handkerchief from her handbag. ‘You’ve just got to be patient, and give yourself time to recover.’

  After a short silence he asked her how she was, and she gave him a lively description of The Limes and her young charges there.

  John Richardson decided that if he wanted to keep her visiting him, he would have to assume an interest in the children who had obviously become central to her life. Fair enough – he could happily listen. It was better after all than having to hear about some new Romeo on the scene. She needed no encouragement, and he joined in her chuckles over the little daily dramas at The Limes, and the comical sayings of the children.

  ‘You’ve done me so much good, Valerie, I can’t thank you enough,’ he told her when she got up to leave. ‘You will come again, won’t you?’

  And unable to think of a reason why she shouldn’t, she smiled and assured him that she would.

  The news of the death of old Mrs Yeomans at Yeomans’ Farm caused far more reaction in North Camp than her son had expected; he forgot that she had lived longer than most of her neighbours, and many of them remembered her as a busy farmhouse wife and mother, a countrywoman through and through. Mary Goddard was genuinely upset that she had not visited the old lady since leaving the farm, unwilling to confront Billy or Pam; she and her father attended the funeral at St Peter’s, and were amazed to find the church packed to capacity. Billy hoped that they would not all expect to come back to the farmhouse afterwards to scoff the thick bacon sandwiches and economy fruit cake that Pam had grudgingly prepared; when he saw Eddie Cooper and Mary enter, he wondered if this might be a good time to approach Mary and offer her a generous wage in return for some help in the house, but on catching Eddie’s unfriendly look he decided that it would not.

  The funeral service was conducted by the Reverend Alan Kennard who asked Sir Cedric Neville to read the eulogy he had written, as Billy was unwilling to do so; Philip Saville played the organ to accompany the two hymns, and most of the congregation followed the coffin to the graveside where the earthly remains of the old lady were lowered to lie close to those of her husband. Billy Yeomans dabbed at his eyes, and Pam stared down at the ground to hide her satisfaction at the removal of a burden. At the conclusion of the burial, many bystanders came forward to shake Billy’s hand and offer condolences, and Mary Goddard alone shed real tears at this farewell to the old lady she had looked after until Sidney’s death freed her to return to her father’s house.

  No sooner had North Camp mourned the death of Billy’s elderly mother than another source of gossip spread from house to house.

  ‘The old lady left ’em a nine-day wonder,’ declared Eddie Cooper to the patrons of the Tradesmen’s Arms, chuckling quietly at their astonished faces.

  ‘Yeah, she got old Mr Jamieson the solicitor to come and see her when Billy and Pam were out of the way,’ he said. ‘My Mary was there, but they didn’t want her in the bedroom, and now we can see why! Jamieson brought along a clerk and a secretary from his office to witness the new Will, and wouldn’t I have liked to see Billy and Pam’s faces when they went to his office in Everham yesterday and heard it! Hah! What a slap in the eye, eh?’

  There were gasps and jaw-droppings as he told his story.

  ‘Go on, go on, what did they hear, Eddie?’ they chorused.

  ‘They got the shock o’ their lives – his mother had left the farmhouse and the farm to her grandsons – to the young nippers, Samuel and Derek – with a couple of thousand for Billy to work the farm until they come of age and can make a decision whether to keep it or sell it.’

  ‘Strewth! I bet that shook ’im!’ marvelled the barman.

  ‘Ah, but that isn’t all,’ said Eddie, putting down his glass. Tom Munday, sitting beside him, nodded and prompted him. ‘Go on, Eddie, you’ll have to tell ’em.’

  ‘She left the capital – thousands of pounds in war bonds and investments – to her granddaughter,’ said Eddie. ‘Her granddaughter and mine, young Dora Goddard!’

  The older men among his listeners began to nod and understand, remembering Mary’s hasty wedding to Sidney, following the news that the elder Yeomans boy, Dick, had been killed at the battle of the Somme. Sidney Goddard had not been called up because of his short sight, and had been persuaded to marry Mary Cooper and call her baby his own. Billy had been a late arrival in the family, born to Mrs Yeomans when she was forty, and Dick had been her firstborn, some twenty years earlier.

  ‘Sidney was a kind husband to Mary, but he could never stand up to a tyrant like Billy, and after Billy married, it was even worse,’ went on Eddie grimly. ‘Sidney was worked to death on that bloody farm, and my Mary did all the housework and cooking, and then had the old lady to look after. Hah! Little did they all know what the old girl was planning for ’em!’

  ‘Good for her!’ was the unanimous verdict of the listeners and the families who passed the news from house to house.

  ‘The old bitch! After all I did for her, the scheming, ungrateful old bitch!’ stormed Mrs Pam Yeomans, but Billy remained silent as his wife ranted in fury, and shook his head when Pam demanded that the Will be contested.

  ‘Jamieson said it would mean huge legal fees, and very little chance o’ changing it,’ he muttered, his thoughts on the brother he had never known, whose death had changed the course of his life.

  As the skies became clear from the menace of the V1s and the V2s, all of which had apparently been used up in one final assault by a defeated enemy, Dora Goddard knew that the ATS would be disbanded after the end of the war, and that at twenty-seven she would have to consider where her future lay. She had gone out with GIs and Canadian soldiers, and her friend Gwen had married a GI and confidently looked forward to making a new life with her husband in the USA after the war. It was a comfort to Dora to know that her mother was happily settled with her grandfather in North Camp, but she had no wish to return to that narrow rural life; her world had grown bigger, and with her skills in wireless telegraphy she hoped to get work in London after the war; she might even travel to New York, a self-sufficient career woman, without forfeiting her independence by marrying a GI!

  And then she was sent for to return to North Camp, and heard the news of her legacy. She saw her mother’s tears, and when her grandfather began hesitantly to tell her that old Mrs Yeomans had been her grandmother, and the reason why she had inherited the money, it seemed to her as if she had always known. Her first thought was to go to her mother’s side and kiss her.

  ‘Sidney always treated you as his daughter, dear,’ whispered Mary.

  ‘Yes, Mum, and as far as I’m concerned he was my father, and I loved him, the only dad I ever knew,’ Dora answered gently, tears coming to her own eyes as she spoke. ‘Don’t worry about it, Mum – you suffered years of bullying from Billy, and now it serves him right. I’ll see you get your share of this money—’

  ‘Oh, no, dear, it’s yours!’

  ‘It’s ours, Mum, ours and Granddad’s,’ insisted Dora. ‘I only wish that dear old Dad was here to share it!’

  Towards the end of the year the lights gradually began to go on again in London and major cities, not as brightly as before the war, but sufficient to raise the people’s spirits after the enforced darkness of the last five years.

  It was Mr Richardson who saw the short news item on an inner page of the Daily Mail, and showed his son John, now home for Christmas.

  John gasped. ‘The silly bugger,’ he said, shaking his head. In a few short lines it was reported that a certain Group Captain Lester Wilberforce Allingham, a decorated war hero now invalided out of the RAF, had been arrested following a drunken brawl outside a Soho night club, when he had punched a youth of seventeen a
nd kicked a woman bystander, both of whom had needed hospital treatment. Allingham had resisted arrest, but was now released on bail, to appear before a magistrate’s court in the New Year. This information was soon pointed out to other North Camp readers, and led to a selling-out of the Daily Mail that day, but a generally sympathetic attitude to a local war hero and his parents.

  Alan Kennard was much disturbed by it, as it seemed to indicate that Lester was probably not leading a celibate life as he would have been advised by the army clinic, and wondered if he should write to him, reminding him that syphilis should still be regarded as infectious for two years, even with treatment, so could be passed on to any woman with whom he had sexual intercourse. After much inward debating with himself, and praying for guidance, he decided not to act in a matter that was not his business and might do more harm than good; he was already thoroughly disliked by the Allinghams’ remaining son.

  Unfortunately the weekly Everham News picked up the story and gave it full coverage, having been refused an interview with the rector and his wife. Mrs Allingham flew into a hysterical rage at the newsagent’s in North Camp, and before a gaping group of bystanders loudly denounced the editor as a rotten coward for reporting a trivial incident involving her heroic son, shell-shocked after being wounded in the service of his country. This time Alan Kennard had no hesitation in writing to the editor on behalf of the Allinghams. Without mentioning Lester by name, he protested at such cruel treatment of a clergyman and his wife, and pointed out that they had already lost a son earlier in the war. He called for an apology, and his letter was printed in the following issue of the newspaper, together with an apology to the Reverend and Mrs Allingham, and like the curate’s letter, there was no mention of Lester Allingham by name.

  ‘I’ll carry the lantern, Mr Kennard!’ offered Nick Grant who had come with Philip Saville to join the carol singers, now congregated in the hallway of Hassett Manor, where Isabel Neville and Sally Tanner were handing round mince pies. Sir Cedric was ladling out the Christmas punch he had made.