by Lily Baxter
‘Raif Carstairs. How do you do?’ He seemed to relent and shook hands with an attempt at a smile. ‘I can give you a lift if you don’t mind a bit of a squash.’
‘My mum told me never to get into a car with a strange man,’ Rita said with a flirtatious grin.
He clicked his heels together and saluted. ‘Flight Lieutenant Raif Carstairs. How do you do?’
Rita’s face split into a wide smile as she grabbed his hand, pumping it up and down. ‘Rita Platt. Pleased to meet you. Ta for the offer, mister.’ Without waiting for a second invitation she climbed into the passenger seat. ‘Hop in, Miranda, mate. There’s room for two little ’uns like us.’
Miranda hesitated. ‘But there isn’t any space for the luggage.’
‘We’ll leave them in Shipway’s garden,’ Raif said decisively. ‘They’ll be safe there. No one would dare steal anything from him.’ He moved the cases one at a time to the safety of the tiny front garden surrounded by a rather dilapidated picket fence.
‘That Evil-Eye bloke sounds like a right ’un.’ Rita patted the seat beside her. ‘Come on, Miranda. What are you waiting for? Let Prince Charming see to the cases. We’re travelling in style.’
Miranda hesitated, torn between the desire to get to her grandparents’ home as quickly as possible and the indignity of squashing in beside Rita. Flight Lieutenant Carstairs must think they were a couple of silly young girls. It was humiliating to say the least, and she dared not think what Grandpa George would say when he found out how she had risked life and limb to flag down the speeding motorcar.
‘He’s a bit of all right,’ Rita said, craning her neck to get a better view of Raif. ‘D’you think he’ll ask me for a date?’
Miranda felt the blood rush to her cheeks. She could not help admiring the lean athletic and rather dashing figure that Raif Carstairs presented in his smart blue uniform. He was quite good-looking, although she would not have described him as handsome, but he was charming and he obviously knew it. She squeezed in beside Rita. ‘He wouldn’t look twice at you, Rita Platt.’
‘Wanna bet?’ Rita said in a phoney American accent.
‘Move over, please.’ Miranda nudged her gently in the ribs. ‘The door handle is cutting into me.’
‘With pleasure. It gives me an excuse to cuddle up to the glamour-boy.’
Miranda said nothing. She sat very still during the drive, suffering torments of embarrassment as she tried to ignore Rita’s flirtatious behaviour. Luckily it was a very short journey. Raif dropped them at the gate and drove off with a cheery wave.
Rita met Miranda’s frown with a carefree chuckle. ‘Your face will stick like that if the wind changes.’ She paused, clutching the gatepost with an agonised expression. ‘Oh, hell. I need the lav. I’ll wet me pants if I don’t go soon.’
Wishing she had never taken pity on Rita Platt, Miranda opened the garden gate. She pointed to the outbuildings at the back of the house. ‘The gardener’s lavatory is the one with the blue door. Wait there when you’re done and I’ll come and find you.’
Rita took off down the crumbling red-brick path as if the devil were on her heels and Miranda followed at a slower pace, but as she emerged from the shade of the overhanging laburnum and the tamarisk she spotted her grandmother on her hands and knees weeding a flowerbed. She broke into a run. ‘Granny. Here I am.’
Maggie Beddoes clambered to her feet, struggling to disentangle her skirt from the clutching thorns of a rose bush. ‘Miranda, my dear girl. We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.’
‘Maman told Grandpa that I’d be arriving on the eleven forty-five train today. Friday the twenty-first.’
‘No, dear. Surely not. Tomorrow is the twenty-first, isn’t it?’ Maggie stared at her in dismay. ‘Oh, bother. I must have looked at the calendar with the wrong spectacles, or maybe I forgot to change the month. I do that quite often.’ She dropped the trowel she had been clutching in her hand and wrapped Miranda in a hug.
Laughing, Miranda drew away as the secateurs in her grandmother’s apron pocket threatened to impale her on their open blades. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m here now, but there’s a small matter of my luggage. Tommy Toop’s cart lost a wheel and I had to leave my cases in the Shipways’ front garden.’
‘You poor girl. I am so sorry. What must you have thought when there was no one to meet you at the station? And you must be exhausted having walked all that way in this heat.’
‘A really nice RAF officer gave us a lift.’
‘Gave you a lift? You accepted a ride in a car with a strange man? Oh, my God. This is all my fault.’
‘No, honestly, he introduced himself very politely. He said his name is Raif Carstairs.’
Maggie’s eyebrows snapped together in a frown. ‘You should have telephoned and we would have come for you. Never accept a lift from strangers.’
Miranda stared at her grandmother in surprise. She was normally easy-going but now she seemed really upset. ‘He was quite respectable, Granny.’
‘Even so, he might have been a spy, or a fifth columnist, besides which we don’t have anything to do with that family.’ Maggie wiped her hands on her apron, leaving streaks of dirt on the coarse material. ‘As to Tommy, the wretched fellow will end up in jail one day, just like his father. Or else he’ll make his fortune and buy us all out. Anyway, it’s his mother I feel sorry for. Poor woman, she does try to keep the family on the straight and narrow.’ She took Miranda by the hand. ‘Come indoors and have some of my homemade lemonade. I’ve been baking cakes too.’
Miranda smiled. She remembered only too well her grandmother’s culinary efforts. They were unforgettable and not for a good reason. Granny was a truly dreadful cook, but no one liked to tell her so, and Miranda had been schooled in the art of the polite lie from a very early age. ‘That would be lovely, Granny. But what about the luggage?’
‘Don’t worry, darling. I’ll get Annie to fetch it. She’s as strong as an ox, just like her brother, but thank goodness her language isn’t as colourful.’ She snatched up her trowel and proceeded to drag Miranda through the tangle of rose bushes and encroaching brambles, slashing away with the implement like an explorer cutting her way through the jungle with a machete.
Highcliffe came into view as they emerged from the dense thicket and Miranda felt a tug of pure love for the eccentric example of Victorian Gothic architecture. With its ornate ironwork veranda, square bay windows, and a tower with a conical roof placed above a widow’s walk, the house always looked as if it were on the point of hurling itself over the cliff in an attempt to escape from its own ugliness. It was, she knew, an optical illusion. Although part of the land had crumbled into the sea during a terrible winter storm not long after the building was erected in the late 1800s, there remained enough expanse of cliff top to ensure its survival for at least another hundred years, or so her grandfather had told her in reassuring tones. When she was a small child she had had nightmares when the walls in her bedroom suddenly disappeared and she found herself flying over the waves on her brass bedstead. Luckily she always woke up before it landed in the water.
Maggie released her hand to hurry on ahead, but she came to a halt with a cry of fright when she reached the outbuildings as Rita leapt out of the gardener’s toilet with a wild scream. She was white and trembling but her eyes flashed angrily. She stalked up to Maggie wagging her finger. ‘What sort of place is this, missis? You got rats the size of tigers in your lav.’
Maggie bridled and drew herself up to her full five feet four inches. ‘Gypsy,’ she said, pointing at Rita. ‘George.’ Her voice rose to a shriek. ‘Gypsies. They’re after our hens again. Come quickly.’
‘No, Granny,’ Miranda said calmly. ‘Rita isn’t a gypsy and she hasn’t come to steal your hens, or anything else for that matter.’
‘She looks like a gypsy. I’ve lost several of my best laying hens to the vagabonds who camp near here.’ Maggie glared suspiciously at Rita. ‘Who is she and what is she doing here?’
>
Rita fisted her hands at her sides. ‘Here, missis. You watch what you’re saying. I ain’t no didicoi. I’m an evacuee from London and I’ve come to a madhouse overrun with sewer rats.’ She uttered a loud shriek as a large grey cat shot past her.
Miranda bent down to scoop it up in her arms. ‘Is this your rat, Rita?’
‘I dunno. It might be,’ Rita said sulkily. ‘All I saw was two big eyes shining in the darkness and it was furry.’
‘This is Dickens and he looks nothing like a rat.’ Maggie took the cat from Miranda and smoothed his ruffled fur. ‘He’s a pedigree British Blue and you must have terrified the poor creature.’ She put him down on the ground and he stalked off with an offended twitch of his tail.
‘No harm done,’ Miranda said, breathing a sigh of relief. ‘I’m sure he’ll get over his fright.’
‘No harm!’ Rita looked from one to the other in disbelief. ‘I almost died in there. You lot are barmy. I wish I’d stayed in London and risked being blown to bits.’
‘So you’re an evacuee.’ Maggie looked her up and down and her expression softened. ‘I’m sorry, my dear girl, but why are you here? Are you sure you’ve got the right address?’
‘I brought Rita here, Granny,’ Miranda said hastily. ‘She was supposed to be staying with a lady in Weymouth who knew her late mother, but there was no one to meet her at the station. Just like me.’
‘Well you’d better come inside, Rita. We’ll telephone the person in question and find out what’s gone wrong.’ Maggie tucked a wisp of silver hair behind her ear with an exasperated sigh. ‘It’s all been very badly organised, but it is wartime and everything is different now, except of course for those wretched gypsies. I’ve a good mind to get a guard dog to watch over my hens. Come to think of it I’d better go and see that they’re all right. Miranda, I leave you to take care of your friend.’ She disappeared round the side of the house.
‘Come along, let’s go indoors,’ Miranda said with an apologetic smile. ‘I could do with freshening up and I expect you could too.’
‘Is your gran always like this? I mean she seems a bit …’ Rita hesitated, biting her lip, ‘you know what I mean.’
‘She’s a dear when you get to know her but she’s had a thing about gypsies ever since she lost some of her hens. Grandpa said he thought it was a fox that had taken them, but there were gypsies camped not far away, and they always seem to get the blame for anything that goes wrong.’
‘Just because I look like this don’t mean I’m a criminal,’ Rita said, pouting. ‘It’s okay for you lot with your big houses and posh cars, but some of us live in the real world. My mum worked her fingers to the bone to bring me up proper.’
‘What about your father?’
‘Never knew him. He disappeared from the scene the moment Mum told him she was up the spout. Her family chucked her out and never spoke to her again. Me nan came round eventually but then she was barmy.’
‘That must have been ghastly for her.’ Miranda led the way out of the yard, taking Rita along a narrow path lined with sweet-smelling shrubs. Bees droned happily as they collected pollen from the flowers and hedge sparrows popped in and out of the leaves like tiny automatons. Nothing seemed to have changed in this timeless spot and Miranda was finding it hard to believe that war had touched this peaceful haven filled with happy childhood memories. It was cool in the shade but the heat hit her as she stepped onto a crazy-paving path at the back of the house. A wide expanse of lawn sloped gently to the cliff top with a breathtaking view of the bay. The sea was a calm turquoise deepening to purple at the horizon, but the sight of barbed wire and tank traps on the beach below was a stark reminder of the fear of invasion and the conflict raging across the Channel.
‘Get a move on,’ Rita said impatiently. ‘You might have come home but I’ve still got to sort out where I’m going to put me head down tonight.’
‘Don’t worry. I’m sure it will be all right.’ Miranda hesitated in the doorway. Rita’s story had touched her more deeply than she could have imagined. ‘Your mother must have had a terrible time. How on earth did she manage?’
‘A spinster aunt took her in, and she looked after me while Mum went out to work. Then Auntie Doreen died and we was on our own. Now it’s just me.’
Miranda’s throat constricted and she swallowed hard. Rita’s life must have been incredibly tough, and now she was all alone in the world. She turned away, unable to think of anything to say that would not sound shallow or patronising. ‘Come inside, Rita. Let’s get cleaned up.’
‘I’m going to be a pin-up girl,’ Rita said, following close on her heels. ‘I’ll show them all what Rita Platt can do.’
‘I’m sure you will.’ Miranda entered the drawing room which in contrast to the searing heat outside was deliciously cool. The scent from vases filled with roses, sweet peas and syringa mingled with the pungent aroma of lavender and beeswax floor polish. ‘Watch out for sliding mats,’ she said, stepping carefully on a faded Persian rug. ‘Annie polishes the floor until it’s like glass. I’ve seen people go skating across the boards and ending up flat on their backs.’
Rita glanced round at the eclectic mix of furniture, well-worn chintz-covered sofas, Regency chairs, inlaid Indian tables and bookcases spilling over with assorted and obviously well-thumbed editions. The walls were hung with oil paintings and water-colours, and every available surface crammed with framed family photographs and a variety of ornaments; Japanese ivories and fat Buddhas with jolly faces jostled for position between Dresden shepherdesses and startling examples of native African art. ‘Looks like a bloody museum,’ Rita murmured.
‘The family travelled a lot. My grandfather was an army doctor and they lived in India for a while, and in Kenya. Anyway, we’d better get a move on. I don’t know about you but I’m getting hungry.’
‘I could eat a bloody horse,’ Rita said with feeling. She met Miranda’s look of disapproval with a casual shrug. ‘Sorry. I’ll try not to swear in front of the old folks.’
‘Even at my age I’d get a rocket if I used words like that.’ Miranda opened the inner door and led the way through a maze of passages to the front of the house and the main hall. She blinked as her eyes grew accustomed to the dimness. The only natural light filtered through a stained-glass window on the bend of the staircase, creating a kaleidoscope of patterns on the encaustic-tiled floor. She had always accepted the slightly bizarre nature of Highcliffe without question, having spent virtually every school holiday in the old house, but seeing it through someone else’s eyes made her realise that it was unusual to say the least. She ushered Rita into the cloakroom. ‘There aren’t any cats in here – or rats,’ she said, grinning. ‘Let’s get cleaned up and then we’ll eat.’ She could only hope that Annie had done most of the cooking. It would be too embarrassing if they were faced with one of Granny’s special dishes like tripe and onions or liver fried until it was the consistency of leather and tasted of iron filings.
*
As she ushered Rita into the kitchen they were almost blown backwards by a waft of hot air and the smell of burning. Swathed in a floral pinafore Annie Shipway, a raw-boned woman of above average height, was up to her elbows in hot water at the sink, washing net curtains. The smell of Sunlight soap, ammonia and burnt bacon fat was overpowering. Maggie burst through the back door and came to a stop in the middle of the room, gazing helplessly at the saucepan on the range which was belching smoke. ‘You’ve let the ham boil dry, you stupid woman,’ she said angrily. ‘That was our meat ration for a week. Now we’ll have to eat fish every day and you know that the major isn’t partial to seafood.’
Annie glanced over her shoulder. ‘Well take the pan off the hob then. Can’t you see I’m busy? I can’t do everything round here. You said wash the nets, not watch the pot.’
‘You’re just being difficult. Those nets needed a good wash.’ Maggie moved warily towards the stove and wrapped her apron round the handle. Lifting the pan and holding it at ar
m’s length she hurried out into the yard leaving a trail of smoke in her wake. She returned moments later with a resigned smile. ‘Oh well. That’s that. At least the hens are laying well. I checked on them and all present and correct. Besides which we should have plenty of potatoes if your grandfather hasn’t used them all up in his silly experiments.’
Miranda exchanged puzzled glances with Rita, but before she had a chance to question her grandmother as to the nature of the experiments, Maggie had gone off on another tack. ‘Annie dear, would you be kind enough to fetch the girls’ cases? They had to leave them in your garden when that Toop boy left them to fend for themselves.’
‘I’ve only got one pair of hands, Mrs B. I’ll go as soon as I’ve hung out the washing, which I’m about to do now, unless you’d like me to sweep the chimbley first or climb up on the roof and replace a few tiles.’
‘No, my dear. That will be all for now,’ Maggie said calmly. ‘I’ll get the girls something to eat and drink and then we’ll see about finding where Rita is to be billeted. I’m sure the major will know the woman who is going to take her in. He knows almost everyone in town.’
‘Everyone who’s committed a crime.’ Annie tossed the nets into a wicker laundry basket. ‘I’ll go and see if Elzevir is home. Even I can’t carry three suitcases at once. You might treat me like a workhorse, Mrs B, but I’ll thank you to remember that I’m a woman just like you.’
‘Oh, get on with you. Do as you please, Annie. You always do.’ Apparently unruffled by her domestic’s uncompromising attitude, Maggie shooed her out of the kitchen.
Mumbling beneath her breath, Annie took the laundry outside, leaving a wet snail-trail behind her as water leaked through the loosely woven wicker.
‘She’s getting worse,’ Miranda said severely. ‘You oughtn’t to let her speak to you like that, Granny.’
Maggie laughed and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh, she’s all right. I don’t take any notice of Annie Shipway. We’ve been together for what seems like a lifetime. She was all sweetness and light today. You should see her when she’s in a bad mood. Anyway, forget about her and I’ll make you a sandwich or something. You must be starving.’ She went to the pantry and Miranda could hear things being moved about in an apparently random manner.