by Angela Arney
‘In Naples I bought and prepared my own food,’ said Liana, thinking how horrified Margaret would be if she knew how ruthlessly she had schemed and fought for every scrap of food. ‘Don’t you have an English saying, “There is a first time for everything”?’ Seeing Margaret’s dismayed look, she added more gently, ‘We’ll do it together. I promise you’ll enjoy it.’ She flashed her such a sweet and confident smile as she spoke that Margaret found herself smiling back and surprised herself by thinking, yes I suppose I might even enjoy it. Yes, I will enjoy it.
‘Now today,’ Liana continued in a businesslike tone of voice, ‘I’d like to meet Wally Pragnell and his wife, the tenants of the home farm.’
*
Later that afternoon, sitting in the great glory of organized muddle that was the Pragnells’ kitchen, Liana marvelled at the difference she felt. Whereas nothing but ubiquitous antagonism had emanated from Edith and Sidney Catermole, nothing but cheerful amity surrounded Wally and his wife, Mary. The kitchen itself was enough to raise the spirits of the most depressed soul, and Margaret obviously loved it. An enormous fireplace almost filled one wall and in its recess stood a gleaming black polished kitchen range with wooden seats on either side. A delicious mixture of cooking smells filled the kitchen: warm bread, pastry, meat stew. Liana, rarely hungry, suddenly felt ravenous. Everything was spotlessly clean – crisp red-and-white-checked curtains at the windows, a wooden table scrubbed until it was bleached bone white, every pot and pan sparkling like mirrors.
Mary and Wally Pragnell were both in their early fifties. A life on the land had given them red, weatherbeaten faces, making them look older than their years but their energy was indefatigable. Mary Pragnell bustled about preparing tea for them, her rotund figure darting into cupboards and flitting in and out of the larder with all the nimbleness of a young girl.
‘Oh, Mary, you always spoil me. You know I’ll do anything for your cooking.’ Margaret settled herself happily in a worn leather chair by the window.
The two women chattered on as the table was laid ready with a blue, willow-patterned tea service, Mary’s best one, only emerging from the china cabinet when Lady Margaret came. Liana started listening to their conversation, but her attention was distracted by the baby in a pram just outside the window. She guessed it must be about nine months old. It lay in its pram, kicking up fat brown legs in the sunshine, pulling at its toes and chuckling happily. She wondered who it belonged to – certainly not Mary Pragnell, she was too old to be producing babies now; but as no-one mentioned it, she did not like to ask. However, once Mary Pragnell announced that tea was ready, Liana temporarily forgot about the baby.
Since her arrival in England, she had become resigned to the unpalatable food served up by Mrs Catermole and had eaten very little. Margaret had never commented, so Liana had assumed that all English food was the same. Now, as Mary’s two daughters, Meg and Dolly, came in with plate after plate of food she knew it was not so. They brought in an enormous, round, crusty brown loaf, still warm to the touch; hot scones with creamy white sides and gleaming golden brown tops; dishes of honey and strawberry jam with whole strawberries the size of large pebbles; clotted cream, thick and lumpy, spilling over from its container; and butter, pale and delicate in colour like newly opened primroses. Meg brought in an apple pie as well, baked in a blue and white enamel dish, the top decorated with pastry roses and leaves, all crunchy and brown with baked sugar. An enormous brown enamel teapot stood ready on the kitchen range, from which Mrs Pragnell poured strong dark tea.
‘But what about the rationing?’ Liana could not help exclaiming. It was Mrs Catermole’s constant plaintive excuse for the lack of fresh food. Even the bread at Broadacres was always hard and stale.
Mrs Pragnell stopped pouring tea and looked surprised. ‘Why bless you, Me Lady, that’s no problem to us country folk. We grows all we needs. We has our own milk, so we makes our own butter and cream; we has bees in plenty who gives us honey: and as for meat, why, we’ve got chickens, rabbits, ducks, pigs.’ She ticked them off on her fingers one by one. Then she turned to Lady Margaret and smiled, ‘And Wally have slaughtered the biggest heifer, haven’t you, Wally?’ Her husband nodded, smiling broadly, but unable to get a word in edgeways, ‘So you’ll be getting your bit of beef on Sunday. I had the butcher put it aside for you and told him to make you up some sausages. I told him, not too much bread filling, give Her Ladyship a bit of extra meat in them for a change. I daresay Mrs Catermole will be serving them up to you later in the week.’
‘I daresay,’ said Margaret on a wry note.
Why, she knows very well she is being cheated. The unexpected realization infuriated Liana. She wanted to say, why can’t you stand up to them? Why don’t you do something about it? But wisely she kept her own counsel. It was not in Margaret’s nature; but no matter, the Catermoles would get their just rewards. She, personally, would see to that.
Finally, Liana had to refuse Mrs Pragnell’s offer of yet another scone. ‘I really cannot eat another thing,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I wish I could. This food is truly, truly ambrosia. I mean, food fit for the gods,’ she added hastily, seeing the puzzled expressions on the Pragnells’ round country faces.
Wally beamed with pride. ‘That’s our Meg you’ve got to thank for that,’ he said. ‘There’s not a cook the length and breadth of Hampshire who can touch our Meg.’
It was late by the time Margaret and Liana set off to walk back to the Big House as all the Pragnells called Broadacres. Their way took them down a lane with high banks; the tight-leafed, twisted hedge of hawthorn and hazel on the top of the bank was ridged crimson with the setting sun. As they walked slowly through the warm, scented air, Margaret told Liana about the Pragnell family.
Wally was the farm tenant but had to take his orders from Sidney Catermole who was the estate manager. Mary helped run the farm and should have overseen the selling of farm produce. ‘But Edith Catermole always does it now,’ said Margaret. ‘She took it over when rationing started because she said Mary wasn’t businesslike enough.’
‘What do you think?’ asked Liana.
Margaret looked unhappy. ‘Well,’ she hesitated. ‘I’ve always been taught not to interfere in the running of the estate. My late husband wouldn’t let me. He appointed the Catermoles, so I didn’t like to say anything.’
‘Your late husband?’ queried Liana.
Margaret smiled at Liana’s bewilderment. ‘It’s an English way of saying dead,’ she replied.
Suddenly memories of Don Luigi came back. She remembered his saying once that idiomatic English is best left to the English because it is mostly incomprehensible to foreigners. ‘Oh, now I understand,’ she said. ‘But, Margaret, as he is dead, surely you can do whatever you wish?’
‘Yes, but I’m not very good at giving orders,’ confessed Margaret, looking shamefaced.
‘Ah, but between us we could do it,’ said Liana with a confidence that immediately cheered Margaret. ‘Now tell me some more about the Pragnells.’ Although she had not mentioned it to Margaret, it was beginning to become mote and more obvious to Liana that the Catermoles were up to their necks in the black market. It was logical: where there was a shortage, there would be a black market. In that respect she suspected England was not so different from Naples.
Margaret continued with her rambling account of the Pragnells. ‘You saw the two daughters.’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘A burden on their parents, both of them – financially, I mean. Dolly, the eldest, is twenty-three and the reason she said nothing and hid herself at the back of the room is that she’s deaf and dumb. But she’s not unintelligent and can pick up things very quickly. She’s a wonderful needle woman and made that pretty dress Meg was wearing. Give her a magazine, and she can copy any dress in it.’
‘I shall get her to make me some clothes when I’ve got rid of this lump,’ said Liana decisively. She patted the now just visible, rounding form of her stomach. ‘She should be able to earn money with
her needle if she’s that good.’
‘Yes, but she needs someone with business acumen to help her, and no-one has any time for her.’
Liana stored that piece of information away. I will find time later, she vowed, after I have dealt with the most immediate problems. ‘And Meg?’ she asked. ‘What is wrong with Meg?’
‘Ah, yes, Meg. She is just twenty, and beautiful as you must have noticed. Meg’s problem is the baby. Did you see the baby in the garden?’ Liana nodded as Margaret continued. ‘The baby, a boy, is illegitimate. Poor Meg, I doubt she’ll get a husband now. Country people are very prudish, and the fact that the child’s father is a foreigner only adds to the problem.’
A sudden raw fear guttered through Liana’s soul. Foreigner, illegitimate: what hateful words. Was the whole world blind and prejudiced? In that instant her heart bled with compassion for Meg, and she felt an immediate kinship. It took a special kind of courage to go on living in the same village, to give birth to a baby and then to keep it without a husband to support mother and child. ‘Where is the child’s father now?’ she asked, her practical nature coming to the fore.
‘Oh, he is still here. His name is Bruno Bauer. He is a German prisoner of war working on the estate. He lives in the loft above the stables and reports back to the POW camp outside Longford once a week. That is why they cannot marry. He will be sent back to Germany as soon as the war finishes. If only he could stay here as he wants, they could be married, but the authorities have refused permission. They say he must go back to Germany,’ Margaret snorted indignantly, ‘although for the life of me I cannot see why. Poor devil, he has nothing to go back to, nothing at all. You see, he comes from Hamburg, and everything, his family, their business, his friends, everything he ever knew, was wiped out on July the twenty-seventh last year. The English had been bombing Hamburg for weeks, but on that night the bombs from England obliterated the city. More than 45,000 people died on that one night alone. They say fireballs rolled across the city and out into the countryside, burning everything.’ Margaret’s voice trembled with tears at the thought. ‘Nothing can justify that,’ she added softly.
Liana looked at her mother-in-law with renewed respect. You even care about your enemies, she thought. You really do care. ‘You don’t hate the Germans then?’ she asked. ‘You don’t think they deserved such a fate?’
‘I don’t hate anyone,’ said Margaret fiercely. ‘Wars are caused by politicians not ordinary people. And although I’d like to, I find I cannot even hate the politicians. After all, they are men, too, all made in God’s image, or so I try to believe.’ She did not add that she found her faith tested to its utmost where her own son William was concerned, a fact which caused her intractable pain.
Men, made in God’s image. But did God exist? A debatable point, thought Liana, but she kept the thought to herself, knowing Margaret would be shocked if she knew the extent of Liana’s disillusionment. Margaret might not be able to hate, but cynicism had made Liana less charitable. She could hate, and she did. She hated the soldiers who had used her body. She hated the unscrupulous fat cats of Naples who had grown rich on the war from the black market, always exploiting those weaker than themselves. And now she hated the Catermoles for exploiting someone as caring and gentle as Margaret Hamilton-Howard.
Rounding a bend in the lane they disturbed a family of rabbits. Entranced, the two women stood and watched as they fled. The adults were gone in a flash of white tails bobbing through the undergrowth, the babies hanging back, curious for a second look at the two great creatures who had disturbed their nocturnal gathering. It was almost dark now. An enormous harvest moon had risen and hung like a great yellow melon in the sky. It was so beautiful Liana wanted to cry.
Her head went back and she stared fiercely at the moon. I will make changes here. I will ensure that this place will always be peaceful and beautiful, she thought passionately. My daughter, Raul’s daughter, is going to grow up in this place, the most beautiful place in the world. Suddenly, she wished everyone could be happy. Everyone, including Meg and Bruno and their baby son. Slowly she smiled triumphantly; she had an idea.
‘Don’t tell the Catermoles that we’ve seen the Pragnells today,’ she said to Margaret.
Margaret looked puzzled. What was it Liana was thinking? She looked more lovely than ever in the mellow light of the harvest moon, beautiful and strangely mysterious. ‘All right,’ she said slowly, ‘but why?’
Liana’s reply was to smile maddeningly and link her arm through her mother-in-law’s. The Catermoles are as good as gone, she thought with malicious satisfaction. But she did not take Margaret into her confidence. Instead she treasured a heady sense of reined-in excitement at the thought of the battle ahead. She would enjoy pitting her wits against the Catermoles’, but they were small fry. Next came the world. She would enjoy that battle even more. The fact that she was pregnant did not daunt Liana, for she felt fitter now than she had done for the past three or four years. The crystal-clear, pure country air gave her energy. Slipping her hand into the pocket of her dress, her fingers closed around the thin airmail letter she had received from Nicholas that morning. You will be pleased, she told him silently, because Broadacres will be a better place by the time you return. It is the least I can do, for you are fathering another man’s child, Raul’s child. For a moment the happy thoughts faltered and she wished it were possible to stop loving Raul; but in spite of that Liana knew she was happier now than she had ever dared to hope. Broadacres offered her so much, so much.
They rounded the last bend and the Big House came into view. Its silhouette stood out against the night sky, the planes and angles alternately ivory and ebony in the moonlight. Liana smiled and thoughts of Raul receded. By this time next week the first part of my plan for changing the fortunes of the Hamilton-Howards will be in operation. Having once made up her mind Liana did not believe in wasting time. All I need now is to gather together the appropriate ammunition. She smiled again in the shadowy darkness and squeezed Margaret’s arm: the Catermoles would be providing that, albeit unwittingly.
Chapter Twelve
Three weeks later Liana and Lady Margaret sat down to what had now become their normal breakfast. William was in his room. As Margaret had feared, the bout of good humour had not lasted, and he had reverted to his usual moody brooding. His presence always cast a blight over the room, and both women were glad when he chose to remain isolated although neither mentioned it to the other.
Liana drank her orange juice, eyeing the crispy bacon, double-yolked eggs and the loaf of wholemeal bread with a new-found healthy appetite.
‘I still find it difficult to believe,’ said Margaret, looking with pleasure at the beautifully set-out table, ‘so much has happened in such a short time.’
The Catermoles had gone, routed in no uncertain manner by Liana because, just as she had so shrewdly anticipated, they had played right into her hands. The final hour arrived when, on the Sunday following the visit to the Pragnells, lunch-time came but the promised roast beef did not.
‘Let down at the last minute,’ Edith Catermole said in answer to Margaret’s timid query.
Liana did not hesitate. This was the moment she had been waiting for. She went storming into the kitchen, Margaret following, her eyes wide open in awe as she beheld the metamorphosis taking place before her. Gone was the fragile beauty with just a hint of inner strength. In its place was an imperious, haughty woman whose eyes flashed a fire that no-one dared defy. It was the same woman who had confronted Nicholas when threatened, only then she had been on the defensive and fear had been the impetus motivating her. Now she was on the attack, and the feeling of power and anger made a heady combination. Although angry, Liana found she was also enjoying herself. ‘The heifer was slaughtered earlier in the week,’ said Liana baldly, coming straight to the point, ‘so what happened to the meat?’
‘What heifer?’
At first Sidney Catermole tried bluffing but Liana quickly demolished each excu
se he presented until eventually even his furtive and devious mind ran out of ideas. At her insistence the ration books were produced, and as Liana had long suspected many of the coupons and points were missing.
By now, Edith and Sidney Catermole were apprehensive wrecks. Liana knew they would have given anything to escape from her presence there and then but she had no intention of letting them off the hook quite so easily. She could not forget the way they had ridiculed and cheated Margaret so she reasoned it would not hurt to make them suffer a little themselves. Bullies, she believed, should always have a taste of their own medicine. A good fright would do them no harm at all.
‘Lady Margaret, could you telephone the local police station? We have a serious matter of black-marketeering to report,’ she said, her voice grim and serious.
‘Oh, my dear, do you think we ought?’
‘Give me one good reason why we should not.’
There was no answer. The Catermoles stared at Liana, their faces the colour of putty. She smiled slowly, enjoying their fear. It was almost possible to see their shifty little minds rattling about in their heads, looking for a way out. But there is no way out, Liana thought triumphantly. They were scheming cheats, preying on the weakness and goodwill of others, and hatred for all they stood for blazed from her face. It might not be possible to rid the whole world of corruption and greed but she could certainly rid Broadacres of the Catermoles.
Turning abruptly, she walked across to the window, tapping the ration books reflectively against her cheek. She had no intention of involving the police, indeed, did not know how to begin to involve them, but the Catermoles did not know that and never would. What she wanted was to force them to slink away, like beaten dogs, their tails between their legs. What she wanted was to make them so afraid of her that they would never set foot in Hampshire again. Reaching the window, she wheeled round fiercely, watching with a small stab of pleasure as they both jumped nervously.