The Black Mountains

by Janet Tanner

  “What have petticoats got to do with crab-apples?” James asked, puzzled.

  “Nothing,” Charlotte replied. “It just reminded me, that’s all. Amy’s petticoat is muslin, and you use muslin to strain the fruit when you’re making apple jelly. Now, I wonder. Have I got time to run down to Fords before we have dinner? It’s Amy’s half-day, and she might come down this afternoon to see if I’ve got it.”

  “If it’s her half-day, why doesn’t she do her own shopping?” James grumbled.

  “Because it’s Wednesday, early closing,” Charlotte said. “ Now, if I put the potatoes on, you could watch them for me, couldn’t you?”

  “I could, but I don’t see it’s necessary for you to run about after her.”

  Charlotte did not reply. She did not want to have to explain that with the boys away in France, she felt she wanted to do all she could for the children who were still with her. She had thought a lot about them all lately, wishing she had had more time to spend with each of them. But there had been too many of them, too close, and she had always been kept so busy. And now they were grown up, all but Harry, and it was too late.

  She put on her coat and hat and went out. Charlie Durrant was just crossing the yard to the privy, reading the pieces of torn-up newspaper that he was taking with him to go on the wire behind the door, and she thought what a shrunken old man he had become since he had retired in the summer. They passed the time of day, and she hurried on.

  In the hill, she saw Edgar Hawker, the telegram boy, pushing his bicycle as he climbed the steepest part of the hill, and her heart began to thud with sick dread. She’d always had this awful feeling when she saw a telegram boy—they so often-brought bad news—and since Fred had been at the Front it was a hundred times worse. But Edgar passed her without comment, and as she turned to watch him, he went through the gateway of one of the cottages in the hill.

  Charlotte heaved an audible sigh of relief and went on. The town was quiet this morning. As she passed the Rectory gates, she saw Caroline Archer going up the drive, and smiled to herself. She still wasn’t leaving the new Rector alone, then. But at least Charlotte felt she had little to fear from her these days.

  Up the hill to the drapers she went, pushing open the door and making the bell jangle.

  The girl assistant who served her was dark and pretty, but Charlotte could not help noticing the curious looks the girl gave her as she measured and cut the lengths of ribbon, and when Charlotte got out her purse to pay, she said in a low, hurried voice, “I am right, aren’t I? You are Ted Hall’s mother?”

  Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “ Yes. Why?”

  “Because … oh, look, my name’s Marjorie Downs. I live next door to Becky Church, or next door to her mother and father, anyway. Becky’s not there any more. But I’ve found out where she is now, and I promised Ted I’d …”

  “Ted’s enlisted in the army,” Charlotte said shortly. “He’s in training on Salisbury Plain.”

  “Yes, but you must write to him. Couldn’t you just pass on an address?” Marjorie said urgently. “ I was going to send the message to you by Rosa Clements, the servant. But somehow I don’t quite trust her. And it’s very important to Becky—and Ted.”

  Charlotte hesitated. From the moment Marjorie had introduced herself, she knew what was coming and wished she could have avoided it. With a gut instinct she knew Rebecca could never make Ted happy, and she thought that the sooner he forgot her the better. But now the matter had been raised again. If she refused to pass on a message, Ted would never forgive her.

  “All right. Tell me what it is and I’ll put it in my next letter,” she said.

  With a quick look towards the millinery room, Marjorie wrote on the bill pad and passed it to Charlotte, who glanced at it while the young girl finished folding the ribbon.

  “Wycherley Grange, Wycherley.”

  “Where’s that?” Charlotte asked.

  “Oxfordshire. Didn’t I put it?”

  “No, but it doesn’t matter. I will,” Charlotte said.

  And taking the ribbons and the address, she left the shop.

  TO TED and Redvers, it seemed that it had rained ever since they arrived at the camp on Salisbury Plain. Everything was grey, from the heavy skies merging on the horizon into the misty hilltops to the hastily erected hutments and tents. Underfoot was mud and sodden, squelchy turf, and even the sheets on the narrow camp beds felt clammy and damp. Ted and Redvers, billeted in one of the hutments, were lucky. The men in the tents were much worse off. The large bells were on the side of the hill, and when it rained really hard the water ran in one side and out the other.

  But the sergeant-major made no allowances. He drilled them relentlessly, and when the rain dripped down his neck, or his socks were damp, he only shouted at them the louder, marching them up and down the flat valley floor until their legs ached and they thought their gun-carrying arm would drop off.

  It was not all drill, of course. There was shooting out at the rifle ranges, and bayonet drill, and bomb-throwing practice which took place in an isolated spot some three miles away from the camp. The boys enjoyed that. There was something satisfying about hurling a missile and seeing it explode in a cloud of smoke. But when the weather was especially bad, three miles was a long way to march. And that particular November afternoon, when they got back from bomb-throwing, they were all exhausted and soaked to the skin.

  “Why did I let you tall me into this?” Redvers asked Ted as they towelled life back into their numb bodies. “I must have been off my trolley.”

  “I didn’t talk you into anything,” Ted retorted. He sounded snappish because there was clean underwear to be put on, and he hated the scratchy tightness of it, and knew he’d be itching all night.

  “Cheer up, lads, here comes t’ mail!” Wally Gifford, a taciturn Geordie who shared their billet, announced.

  “Shut up, Gifford, you’ve no business here anyway,” Redvers chided him good-naturedly, and Wally laughed.

  “You’re right enough there, lad,” he agreed in his flat tones. He had thought he had joined one of the northern regiments, and it was still a mystery to him how he had come to find himself in the Somersets.

  The mail was distributed, and they all fell upon it eagerly. But Ted, seeing his letter was from Charlotte, left it on his bunk until he was properly dressed. He was as keen to get a letter from home as anyone, but Charlotte wrote regularly, and he thought the gossip from the rank and the tales of Harry’s latest pranks could wait until he was warm and dry.

  At last, shivering in his tight undershirt, he sat down on his bunk and slit open the envelope. It was as he had thought—all the usual family gossip. But at the bottom of the second page, almost reluctantly, Charlotte had added a postscript.

  I saw Rebecca’s friend Marjorie today, and she told me Rebecca is now at Wycherley Grange, Wycherley, Oxon. But according to Marjorie, things are as difficult as ever, so what you do is up to you.

  For a moment he stared at it, almost unable to believe his eyes, then he let out a whoop that made the others turn to look at him.

  “Wha’s up wi’ you, lad?” Wally asked, unsmiling, and Ted could have bitten off his tongue.

  “Oh, nothing, just a girl I thought I’d lost contact with,” he said, but it was too late to cover up the way he felt, and besides, Redvers knew all about Rebecca.

  “You don’t mean the old boy’s let her go, do you?” he asked.

  “No,” Ted said, “But now I know where she is, I can go and see her.”

  “I’d write first if I was you,” Wally advised. “Just to make sure the coast’s still clear.”

  Ted thought about it “If I do that, someone might get hold of my letter and take her out of my way. No, I think it would be best to take them all by surprise.”

  They began to tease him then, but Ted took it all in good part. He was too relieved to care what they said. Knowing where Rebecca was made him feel great, even if he couldn’t go to see her until he finishe
d his training and got his embarkation leave in just over two weeks’ time. And for the moment he didn’t stop to think that after that brief leave there would be the Channel between them, if not an ocean.

  As the initial excitement wore off, the two weeks stretched ahead of him endlessly. Sometimes, he passed the time by wondering what she would say when she saw him. Sometimes he tried to look further ahead, making plans as to how he could get her away and marry her. He was eager now to get to the Kaiser. The sooner the war was over, the sooner he and hundreds like him would be able to return to normal living and get on with their lives.

  Redvers was going home for his embarkation leave, and the night before their passing-out parade, Ted asked him yet again to explain to Charlotte why he was not coming home, too. He had written, of course, but words on paper could not adequately express his feelings, and he knew the family would be hurt to think he was going to France without seeing them first. But it couldn’t be helped. It wasn’t really that Rebecca was more important to him than they were, just that when he was thinking of her anyone else ceased to exist.

  On the last day he managed to save his bacon rinds at breakfast time and wrap them in his handkerchief.

  “Give these to Nipper, will you?” he said, pushing them into Redvers’s kit-bag. “He loves a bit of bacon, always has.” But there was no time for sentiment, and even the thought of Nipper’s wagging tail and rough tongue could not change his mind.

  “Anybody’d think this was t’only girl in t’world,” Wally remarked. “Later on, tha’ll see more on her than tha’ wants.”

  But Ted ignored him. He knew better than to try to explain he could never, if he lived to be a hundred, see too much of Rebecca. Here, with the other recruits, he was expected to behave like a man—and men were not supposed to have romantic notions.

  With the others, Ted went to Westbury Station to catch a train, but he could not concentrate on their jokes or bother to join in when they started whistling after a buxom young woman in porter’s uniform who was pushing a laden trolley up and down the platform. He had not realized that women really were doing men’s jobs, but that was as far as it went. He couldn’t be bothered to join in the catcalls, for his mind was too occupied.

  As he stood in the corridor of the train, his kit-bag propped against his knees, watching the rolling hills of Wiltshire disappear into the December mists, his thoughts were far from the war. To him all that mattered—all that had mattered for the last year—was almost within his grasp once more. He was going to see Rebecca, and no one, not even the Kaiser himself, could stop him.

  WYCHERLEY VILLAGE was set in a valley, not a steep-sided bowl like the one Hillsbridge had sprung up in and around, but a gentle fold in the Chiltern Hills. After leaving the train, Ted had begged a lift on a fruit wagon, and when it set him down outside the Crossways Tavern, dusk had already fallen. He looked around him and saw a handful of cottages, whitewashed and thatched behind their neat patches of garden, and a small all-purpose store whose window overlooked the spot where he was standing. The tavern was not yet open, but a light was burning behind the jars and bottles of sweets in the shop window, and Ted hoisted his kit-bag on to his shoulder, crossed the road and pushed open the door.

  The jangling bell brought a woman into the shop. She emerged from a curtain behind the counter like a genie from a lamp.

  “Yes, can I help you?” Her eyes moved over him quickly and with interest, and he guessed that this shop was the local gossip spot.

  “I’m looking for somewhere to stay, just for a day or two. Does anybody here let rooms?”

  Her brow creased. Wycherley had never enticed many visitors, and since the war had begun there had been none at all.

  “Well, there’s the pub. They might …”

  “They aren’t open yet.”

  “I don’t know then. I can’t suggest anything. Why?”

  Ted decided he might as well tell the truth now as later.

  “I’ve come to see a friend of mine—a girl—who’s in service at Wycherley Grange. I’m being posted to France next week.”

  Quite suddenly the little woman’s attitude became more cordial. “My man’s in France,” she said with pride. “A regular he is, of course, but when there’s a war on …” She broke off, looking at him closely. “ Where you from then?”

  “I’ve just been training on Salisbury Plain. Left there this morning.”

  “And you’ve been travelling ever since?”

  He nodded, and after a moment’s thought, she seemed to make up her mind.

  “I’ve got a spare room. It’s not much, mind. But you can stay there the night if you want. It’s not for bringing this lass of yours back to, of course. I wouldn’t want them sort of goings on, but …”

  “Nor me. How much will you want for it?”

  She looked embarrassed. “Oh, I don’t know. We can talk about that later, can’t we?”

  He held out his hand. “Right, it’s a deal. And thanks very much. I’m Ted Hall, by the way.”

  She nodded, lifting the counter for him to come through. “Mrs Pledger. Now. I expect you could do with a cup of tea …”

  The rooms behind the shop were small and cluttered. It was a tiny living room which, to Ted’s bewilderment, seemed to be full of the ticking of at least a dozen clocks. He climbed the narrow wooden staircase leading to an equally narrow room beneath the eaves. Ted set down his kit-bag beside the chest of drawers, flung his greatcoat across the bed, and went back down for the promised cup of tea. He was shaking with impatience to see Rebecca, but he hoped that Mrs Pledger might be able to tell him something of the situation at The Grange.

  Sure enough, over a cup of tea so strong that it seared his empty stomach, she talked of the ‘gentry’ from London, going into so much of their family history that Ted was soon hopelessly lost. What he did manage to learn was that The Grange was the home of Lady Harcourte’s parents, and the household had moved down to the country to escape the bombing in town. After a break to make him a plateful of egg sandwiches, Mrs Pledger went on to tell him that there was a daughter, Rachel, who was about Rebecca’s age.

  “I should think your young lady is lady’s maid to the young mistress,” she told him, proud of her knowledge.

  “I think I’ll go up there right away,” Ted said when he had finished his tea and sandwiches. “ I’ve only got a couple of days, and they’ll go by like lightning.”

  Mrs Pledger sighed, wiping her hands on her apron, and using the voice of experience. “You’re right there. There’s nothing like leave for giving the clock wings,” she said. “Well, good luck to you, my lad, that’s what I say. Good luck to all of you!”

  For the first time for more than a week, it was a dry night. The stars were shining, and the wind had dropped. Ted followed the road Mrs Pledger had described, turning into a lane and then into a drive.

  As the house came into sight, so the drive divided, one fork leading to the high vaulted front door, the other curving around to the side of the house. He took the latter path. Every nerve in his body was taut with tension. What sort of reception would he get? If the aunt answered the door, perhaps she would not even let him see Rebecca. He climbed two stone steps, raised his hand to knock and, after the smallest hesitation, banged sharply. Almost at once he heard footsteps coming along a flagged corridor, and for the first time in years he found himself praying: “ Let her be here. Oh, dear God, let her be here.”

  The door opened. Lamplight flooded out into the darkness, and he stood for a moment, half-blinded, half-disbelieving. It couldn’t be, surely … She wouldn’t be opening the door, would she?

  “Becky,” he said.

  She stood with one arm raised to hold the door open, her head tilted to one side so that she looked like a small neat bird. No words passed her lips. Then, “ Ted,” she whispered, her voice trembling, uncertain and full of awe. “Ted … oh, Ted.”

  Time was suspended as they looked at one another, then, in a fluid movement th
at seemed to envelope them both, they were in each other’s arms, laughing, crying and clinging to one another.

  From the depths of the house, a stern voice called, “ Who is it at this time of night?”

  Rebecca wriggled free.

  “It’s all right. It’s someone come to see me, Mrs Haydon.”

  Then, without explanation, she pressed her face to his again.

  Beneath his lips, her cheeks were salt, the taste of tears mingling with the delicate perfume of her hair. Her body was smaller and firmer than he remembered it, and he moved his hands from her shoulders and breasts to her narrow waist and the curving swell of her hips, as if to remember, by touch, every inch of her.

  “Oh, Becky, I want you so,” he said breathlessly.

  “And I want you. Oh, Ted, I’ve wanted you and wanted you.”

  He laughed then, delighted by her, and she turned to pull the door after her, shutting them out into the night.

  “Won’t you be missed?” he asked. “ Your aunt?”

  “Lady Harcourte had to go visiting for a couple of days. Aunt Amelia has gone with her. Oh, Ted, what luck that you should come just now! Look, let’s go into the garden. There’s so much to say …”

  “But you’ll be cold …”

  “Oh, I don’t care if I am. I don’t care about anything now.”

  “Go back and get a coat.”

  “No, you might disappear again.”

  “Well, have mine then.”

  He took it off and slipped it round her shoulders, taking the opportunity to caress her again, and she leaned fondly against him.

  “You came, Ted, you came,” she whispered.

  “Soon as I could. I’ve joined up.”

  “Yes. But why ever did you go and volunteer for a soldier?”

  They were in the garden now, walking along the narrow path between the shadowy cabbages and making for the shelter of the wall that divided it from the orchard. Ted did not want to talk. He was burning with urgent desire, and he wanted only to hold her again and feel her so close to him that a single thrust could make them one. His body ached for her, his senses reeling.