Edie's Home for Orphans

by Gracie Taylor

  ‘Prue should take the credit for that. I just gave her a nudge.’

  ‘You did, and in such a gentle way that you opened her heart again,’ Tilly said earnestly. ‘I don’t believe anyone else could have done what you did, Edie.’

  Edie blushed at the praise. ‘Well, thank you. I hope you’re right.’

  ‘It would have made your parents very proud.’ Tilly squeezed her shoulder. ‘I’m proud of you.’

  Edie glanced out of the window at a sound from outside. Johnny Metcalfe, who was employed as a sort of general errand boy by a couple of the village shops, had just skidded to a halt on his bike. A moment later, the doorbell sounded.

  ‘I wonder what he wants,’ Tilly said.

  ‘Bit late to be bringing anything over.’ Edie sipped her tea. ‘What sort of mood is Prue in today, Till?’

  ‘Floating on air,’ Tilly said with a smile. ‘I caught her arranging fresh roses in the dining room earlier, humming “Oh Here is Love” from The Pirates of Penzance. Why?’

  ‘I’ve got a surprise in the stable.’

  Tilly shook her head. ‘Not another animal?’

  ‘Yes, a stray bitch pup. I hope she –’

  Suddenly, the calm was broken by a heartrending wail.

  Edie jumped to her feet. ‘Oh my God! What is it?’

  At first she thought it was Jack, but this hadn’t been a man’s voice. A sense of horror settled on her heart, and as she met Tilly’s eyes, she realised her friend was thinking the same thing. Because one of Johnny Metcalfe’s jobs in the village was telegraph boy for the post office – or, as they were often nicknamed nowadays, an angel of death …

  ‘Edie,’ Tilly whispered. ‘You don’t think Johnny was here to …’

  ‘We’d better go to her.’

  In the hall, Edie’s worst fears were realised. Prue had sunk on to the bottom step, her face deathly white as she clutched a telegram. Edie felt the blood draining from her face too. Everyone lived in fear of telegrams these days – with good reason.

  ‘Prue, not … not Bertie?’ she whispered.

  Jack and the children had appeared now. Prue didn’t look at any of them; she only stared blankly ahead with unseeing eyes.

  ‘Jack,’ Prue whispered. ‘My boy, Jack.’

  She held out the telegram to him, and Edie watched the same deathly pallor creep into his face.

  ‘Jack, what does it say? Tell us,’ Tilly said. ‘Bertie isn’t … dead, is he?’

  ‘Missing in action,’ Jack whispered.

  He choked back a sob and grasped at the banister for support. Edie took the telegram from him so she and Tilly could read it too.

  Deeply regret to inform you your son 32819 Midn. A J Hewitt has been reported missing. Letter follows.

  Just a few cold, formal words to deliver such complete devastation …

  Coco, seeming to sense that Prue was in pain, pressed his nose against her hand. Coming to her senses, she pulled the hand sharply away.

  ‘What … what is this?’ she demanded, looking round at them as if newly awake. ‘What are you all gawping at?’

  ‘We’re not,’ Edie said gently. ‘We just want to help, Prue.’

  ‘Help!’ Prue said, rising to her feet. A desperate, angry grief had replaced the blank look in her eyes. ‘Can you bring back my boy? No one has that sort of black magic.’ Her brow knit into a hard frown as she looked down at Coco. ‘Why must this creature keep badgering me?’

  ‘He’s only being nice, Aunty Prue,’ Aggie whispered in a tremulous voice. ‘He don’t like to see you sad.’

  ‘Why is my home overrun with these things? This … this damned invasion!’ Prue’s voice was becoming shrill now.

  ‘Please calm down,’ Edie said. ‘I know you’re upset, but –’

  Prue spun to fix her with an angry glare. ‘This is your doing. All these animals, these children: every time I turn a corner I trip over one of them. Everything was peaceful until you came.’

  ‘Prue, please. We all want to help you. Don’t be angry with us.’

  ‘I knew you were going to bring trouble, with your flag-waving nonsense about the war and these animals you insisted on bringing into my home. I should have trusted my gut and put you back on the train to London.’

  ‘You’re not making sense,’ Jack said, putting a hand on her shoulder. ‘Edie’s not done anything wrong. Why don’t you come with me?’

  ‘Go with you!’ She spun to face him. ‘This is a judgement on me, that’s what it is. God’s punishing me for betraying Albert’s memory. And you, his best friend, trying to take his place in my affections! How … how dare you!’

  ‘I’ve never tried to take anyone’s place,’ Jack said quietly. ‘I’m in love with you, Cheg. That’s all.’

  She pushed his hand away from her shoulder. ‘For God’s sake, will you please stop addressing me by that silly childish name? You seem to make a habit of forgetting who’s mistress here, Jack Graham.’ She glared round at them. ‘All of you. You treat this place as though you own it, filling it with every mangy stray you come across without so much as a by-your-leave. This is my home, damn you all! Mine and Albert’s and …’ She choked on a sob. ‘… and Bertie’s.’

  The evacuees looked terrified now, and Tilly rested her hands on their shoulders.

  ‘Prue, please,’ she said in a low voice. ‘You’re upsetting the children.’

  Prue looked down at them, and suddenly her fierce glare disappeared, replaced with a crumpled look of pain that was quite horrible to witness.

  ‘I want them all out,’ she said in a hoarse whisper.

  Edie frowned. ‘What?’

  ‘I want every single one of these cursed animals out of my home, immediately. And the rest of you …’ She swallowed hard. ‘Stay out of my sight. We’re not a family, we never were. We’re just a group of people living under one roof because we’re not wanted anywhere else. I never want to see anyone, human or animal, again as long as I live.’

  She brushed Jack aside and swept upstairs to her room. The hurt expression on the gardener’s face as he watched her go was heartbreaking.

  Edie put a hand on his arm.

  ‘You know she doesn’t mean any of that, Jack,’ she said quietly. ‘She’s grieving and she lashed out. At all of us, not just you.’

  ‘Sounded like she meant it to me,’ he muttered. He took the telegram from Edie and stared at it with blank eyes. ‘That’s what war does to people. Tears their hearts out. Makes them cruel.’

  ‘We won’t never be adopted now,’ Aggie whispered to Jimmy. ‘Aunty Prue don’t want no one here now.’

  ‘That isn’t true, Aggie,’ Tilly said in a soothing voice. ‘Aunty Prue is upset, that’s all.’ She glanced at Edie. ‘I think I ought to take the little ones to their room.’

  Aggie went to pick up Coco, but Edie shook her head.

  ‘Coco had better sleep out in the stables tonight, Ag. We don’t want to risk upsetting Aunty Prue any more than she already is. We’ll put the animals out of sight until she’s had a chance to calm down.’

  ‘She wouldn’t really send them away, would she?’ Jimmy whispered tremulously. ‘Not Felix an’ Coco an’ Pepper an’ all of them? They’ll die, Miss.’

  ‘I don’t believe she will. When she’s had time to recover from the shock … well, let’s see where we stand in the morning.’

  Jack, still reeling from the hurt caused by Prue’s hard words, retired to his room while Edie and Tilly made the animals comfortable in the stables. It was a tricky business, trying to ensure that canaries were kept out of reach of kittens and there was enough bedding for them all to stay warm overnight, but with the aid of old blankets and weighted vegetable crates to block off the bottom part of the stalls’ half-doors, the girls were able to create a dormitory of sorts.

  ‘Well, it’s all right for one night but it won’t do for long,’ Tilly said. ‘Do you think Prue will change her mind about the animals, Edie? She sounded awfully certain.’


  ‘She’s in pain. Of course she is, her only son is most likely dead. I can’t even imagine how much that must hurt, can you?’

  Tilly shook her head soberly. ‘It’s every mother’s nightmare.’ She glanced up. ‘It’s not without hope though. Perhaps he was captured.’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose,’ Edie said, but she could hear the doubt in her voice.

  ‘He was due home on leave in a fortnight too.’ Tilly sighed. ‘What a horribly cruel thing to happen.’

  ‘Poor Prue,’ Edie said softly. ‘And poor Jack. I felt like I could see his heart breaking when she accused him of trying to take Albert’s place.’

  ‘And he’s been so happy since the engagement,’ Tilly murmured.

  ‘Prue’s still got the same good heart though. We just need to find some way to get through to her again.’

  ‘How? She seemed determined to shut us all out, along with the rest of the world. We’re right back to where we started with her when you got here.’

  ‘Except that even then, she couldn’t resist a lost cause. You told me so yourself.’ Edie glanced at the stray pup she’d brought home that evening, who was sharing a meal of horse meat with Coco. ‘Till, I think I have an idea.’

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Tilly hissed as Edie smuggled the little pup into the stone porch that led to the kitchen. ‘She’ll freeze to death out here if no one finds her.’

  ‘Trust me,’ Edie whispered back. ‘Prue always checks front and back doors are locked before she retires. The puppy might be cold for a short while, but she’ll be found within the hour. This is for the greater good.’

  ‘What if Prue doesn’t find her? What if she stays shut up in her room? Don’t forget she’s grieving.’

  ‘She checks the doors every night, always at the same time. We just have to trust she’s too much a creature of habit to change her routine.’ Edie picked up one of the plant pots that sat in the nooks either side of the porch. ‘This’ll give our pup a cover story. It’s important Prue thinks she’s the one to have discovered her.’

  She smashed the thing as quietly as she could, crouching down and cracking it against the flags like an egg.

  ‘What if she throws the dog out?’ Tilly whispered. ‘She was adamant she never wanted to see another animal again.’

  ‘She won’t.’ Edie glanced at the shaggy-haired puppy, which was looking up at her with big, puzzled eyes. ‘She couldn’t.’

  Chapter 38

  Prue was sitting on the end of her bed, hands folded in her lap, staring at the white-faced old lady in her dressing table mirror.

  It was funny how she hadn’t managed to shed a tear. Her eyes were as dry as they had been when the telegram arrived. She didn’t feel anything now her anger had subsided: just numbness.

  There was a photo of Bertie in uniform on the dresser, looking at her with his father’s eyes and the boyish grin that had always been so effective at getting him out of scrapes. He couldn’t be dead, could he? He was too much a living presence in her life: her brave young son of whom she’d always been so proud.

  Prue’s brain was filled with memories, flickering across it like a magic lantern show. Bertie, a babe in arms, while his father stood proudly over his wife and child. Bertie, giggling with delight as old Captain trotted around the gardens with the toddler on his back. Bertie in his school uniform, playing cricket with Jack in the grounds just as his father had once done – just as Jimmy did now. Each generation following the one before … until today.

  There would be no grandchildren playing cricket in the grounds of Applefield Manor to brighten Prue’s old age. Bertie would never know, now, the heady joy of falling in love, or the blissful serenity of marriage with a kindred spirit. All of these pleasures would be denied to him by this war, this damned war, that stole young men’s futures from them. Thousands of them slaughtered every day, ending not only their lives but the lives in potential: the children and grandchildren who would never be.

  Suddenly, Prue was overwhelmed with anger. Anger at the war, and the men who sat behind their desks sending children to be butchered. Anger at God, for allowing something so utterly monstrous. Anger at the unfairness of it, that it had to be her boy who was taken, her only child – all she had in the world. She snatched up the mirror and hurled it at the wall, feeling a satisfaction that was all too fleeting as she watched it shatter.

  Seven years’ bad luck, wasn’t that what the old superstition said? Prue gave a hard laugh. Well, Fate could do its worst, now. With Bertie gone, she had nothing else left to lose.

  And yet still the tears wouldn’t come.

  Through the wall she could hear Samantha’s soft wails. Matilda sang a lullaby as she rocked the child to sleep, just as Prue had once done for her own little baby.

  Why had she ever opened her home to these people? It only brought pain when you let yourself care. First you trusted people, then you learned to love them, then … then they left you, and broke your heart. She had been right to close the doors when Albert died, to her home and her soul. The more people you let in, the more they’d end up hurting you, until your heart had been shattered over and over, like the shards of mirror on her bedroom carpet, and no amount of glue could …

  But she was rambling, and it was nine o’clock. She still had enough concern for those under her roof to ensure they weren’t all murdered in their beds. Throwing on her dressing gown, she crept downstairs to lock the front door, then went into the kitchen to check the back.

  She frowned when she opened the door that separated the kitchen from the porch and discovered a pair of little eyes staring up at her.

  Another damn animal! Hadn’t she said she wanted them all out of her sight? Which one was it: that terrier of Aggie’s?

  The thing let out a small whimper, and Prue bent to look at it.

  No, it wasn’t Coco. This was a dog she’d never seen before, a mongrel of very uncertain heritage with shaggy black fur. It was small, very small; too small to be away from its mother, Prue was sure, and skinny to the point of starvation. What was more, it was shivering all over. The porch was solid stone, and it wasn’t a warm night.

  ‘Now, how on earth did you get in here?’ she said to it.

  There were two arch-shaped holes just above ground level on either side of the porch: a decorative feature that Prue liked to fill with pots of flowering shrubs in the summertime. One of the pots, she could see, had been shattered on the porch floor, soil and flowers spilling out everywhere.

  ‘So that’s it, is it?’ she muttered. ‘You broke in. It seems even now I’m not safe from invasion.’

  She picked up the dog, opened the porch’s back door and put it out, trying to ignore the way its little frozen body cuddled into her.

  ‘Go on now, go,’ she told it firmly, pointing out into the night. A cold drizzle misted the air. ‘Go find somewhere else. We’re not open to strays, not any more.’

  The dog looked up at her with pleading eyes.

  ‘No. I said no.’

  Prue resolutely turned her back and went into the house. She locked both outer and inner doors and went up to bed.

  But she couldn’t fall asleep. Her mind was still full of thoughts of what she’d lost. Fragmented images of Bertie, as a boy and a young man; of the pain on the faces of the people she loved as her anger had exploded; and of a malnourished little puppy, shivering with cold and fear.

  ‘Oh … damn it.’ Prue got out of bed again, went downstairs and unlocked the porch doors.

  The dog was still there, curled in a shivering, wet ball by the back step, seemingly unsure what to do with itself.

  ‘All right, dog, come on. I won’t see another life lost, not today.’ Prue picked up the dog and took it into the house.

  Prue carried the puppy to the sitting room, where she stoked up the embers of the fire until it was blazing again. She wrapped the dog – a little girl – in a couple of old blankets and put her in front of the blaze to warm up, then went to make her a dish of b
read and milk.

  ‘I could be arrested for giving you this, you know,’ Prue said as she put down the dish. ‘It’s against the law to give milk to dogs these days.’

  The puppy seemed suitably grateful, licking Prue’s hand before she fell on her meal, and Prue tickled her between the ears.

  What a cruel world this was, Prue reflected as she watched the dog lap hungrily at the concoction. She remembered how Jack had once saved a stray like this from a gang of lads who had been throwing stones at the poor thing, many years ago when they were children. Jack had seen them off with his fists – a gentle boy by nature, he could nevertheless fight well enough when he set his mind to it, and he never could abide cruelty to animals. Nor could Prue. How could anyone derive pleasure from causing pain to a defenceless creature? There must surely be a special place in hell for those who mistreated animals and children.

  And she had put the starving little thing out into the cold and rain, to die perhaps! What had she become? She was sure she never used to be hard, or cruel. And yet tonight, in the rawness of her grief … she could see their faces now, how they had looked when she said those awful things. The children, Edie, Matilda … Jack.

  Then the tears came at last. Suddenly Prue was overwhelmed by breathless, hacking sobs, choking her so she could hardly draw breath. Her heart hurt as she thought not only of what she’d lost but what she’d thrown away. Who was she? When she heard again the hurtful things she’d said, she didn’t know herself. If Albert could see her from Heaven, if – God forbid – Bertie could, how ashamed they must be. To the children too! And to Jack, her dearest friend; the only man besides Albert she had ever loved in her life. What had she said to him? To throw his position in his face like that, and accuse him of betraying Albert when for years he had stayed silent out of respect for his old friend. She doubted he would ever forgive her. She didn’t deserve him to.