‘Oh.’ I’d finally found someone who might have become a mate if I were to take on Madge’s project and be holed up here in the North, but he was off to see the world while I was stuck back in Westenbury. Depression descended once more as Neil stood, leaned over and, still smiling, kissed my cheek – ‘I always wanted to do that’ – and moved on.
‘Charlie. I thought it was you.’ Josh Lee sat squarely in front of me, arms folded and leaned towards me. ‘You’re looking great. Daisy tells me you’re back for good?’
‘No. No, no…’ I protested. ‘I’m, well, I’m going to be here for a while as I project manage a renovation.’
Josh was instantly alert. ‘A renovation? A building, you mean?’
‘As opposed to what?’
‘Well, you could be an art dealer? You know, renovating pictures? I seem to remember you were always known as the best artist in school?’
‘Nope.’
‘Oh, of course,’ Josh interrupted. ‘An architect. You went to do architecture, didn’t you?’
‘So, what did you end up doing?’ Although I hadn’t really given Josh Lee a second thought once I’d left home and immersed myself fully in uni life and then work, I was curious. He was still a good-looking guy and I was surprised he was still living round here.
Josh smiled. ‘Did my first year at Exeter, decided academia wasn’t for me and, instead, I came home and threw myself into my dad’s business. I’ve taken it over fully now. Dad’s gone to live the ex-pat life in Alicante with his new partner.’
‘Oh, he was a builder, wasn’t he? I remember now.’
‘My company is responsible for most of the new development in Westenbury. We’re just in the process of acquiring quite a bit of land from Edward Bamforth – the land he managed to get planning permission for last year – and so we’re going to be busy.’
‘Well done.’ Josh was obviously very proud of what he’d achieved. I glanced at his ring finger. ‘And no wife or partner?’
‘Absolutely not. I’m far too happy with my life to want to be settling down.’ He leaned forward and grinned. ‘But, now you’re back, Charlie, I can offer my services – building or, er, anything else you might have in mind?’
Despite myself, I smiled. ‘Well, if you can point me in the right direction of good builders once we actually start renovating Holly Close Farm – that’s my great-grandmother’s house – then that would be really helpful. I’m obviously going to have to find a whole gang of people: builders, electricians, joiners.’ I suddenly felt really excited at the prospect. This was what I was good at and I was starting to relish the challenge ahead.
‘Oy, come on, love, it’s not the bloody job centre here, you know.’ The bell had gone while Josh and I were in discussion over builders, and the next man was hovering, waiting to take Josh’s seat.
Josh grinned at me as he stood. ‘How about dinner in the next couple of days to discuss?’
‘Purely work,’ I grinned back.
‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘What else were you thinking of?’
9
‘So, was Arthur the love of your life?’ I asked Madge. It was a couple of days after the speed dating and Daisy had dropped me off at Almast Haven before driving herself to Madge’s bungalow to start attacking the garden there. I’d changed Madge’s library books for her and brought a bottle of the Merlot she loved and the turmeric powder she insisted was keeping her free from dementia. I was in that mood that, if I couldn’t have my own love of my life, I was more than happy to listen to someone else’s. As long as it was in the past, mind you; anyone trying to shove any current wonderful love life down my throat would have got short shrift.
‘Arthur? Love of my life?’ Madge gave a wry smile. ‘I married him.’
‘Had you known him a long time?’
‘Oh, yes, we grew up together. Joyce, Arthur’s sister, was my best friend all through school and then we had our looms next to each other once we left school and went to work in the mill.’
‘That must be strange, ending up with someone you went to school with,’ I frowned. And then I pulled a face. ‘Which is a daft thing for me to say – I’ve just agreed to go for a meal with someone I went to school with.’
‘Oh?’ Madge’s eyes gleamed. ‘That was quick work. You haven’t been back a week and you’ve already got a hot date?’
‘I don’t know about hot.’ I laughed at her turn of phrase. ‘It’s only Josh Lee. I did have a bit of a thing about him when I was seventeen, but I’ve agreed to meet up with him because he’s a builder. He might be the one to use for the renovation. So, tell me about Arthur?’
‘Well, darling, it was wartime, of course. Arthur was desperate to be in the RAF rather than be conscripted into the army like most of the boys round here. He had a notion that, once he was accepted by the RAF, he’d be flying planes and become a part of Bomber Command, but it didn’t work out like that. You have to remember Arthur was just a local lad with only the minimum of education. He’d been a couple of years above me at school, but needs must and, like most of us, he had to leave school at fourteen and go to work to bring in money for the family. Arthur’s family was particularly badly off because his dad had been wounded in the trenches during the First World War and, once home, never worked again. The pilots for training were your public school boys and grammar school boys, who understood advanced maths and science. Poor Arthur was accepted by the RAF but he didn’t get a sniff of flying an actual plane all the time he was there. It did make him quite bitter: I could see him becoming like Herbert, his father, who was constantly aggressive and bitter because of what he’d gone through and how he’d ended up back in 1917. And that worried me.’
‘So, what did Arthur do then?’ I didn’t know enough about the war and suddenly I was really interested.
‘Well, as I say, he didn’t have the education to get himself into pilot training so, instead, he was trained as a mechanic: “erks” they were known as for some reason. You know, he was able to grease and mend the planes but not allowed to fly them. I don’t think he ever got over the disappointment of it all.’ Madge looked sad for a moment as she remembered. ‘And of course, Arthur didn’t want me joining the air force as well.’
I stared at Madge. ‘You joined up? I never knew that.’
She laughed. ‘What did you think I did during the war?’
‘I never thought about it really. I mean, it’s such a long time ago.’
‘Not to me it isn’t. It seems like yesterday. Arthur didn’t want me to join up and, because I was a weaver at Goodners and Sons – you know the old mill on the outskirts of Midhope? – and old Frank Goodners was given a government contract to make uniforms, we mill workers were seen as being in a reserved occupation and didn’t have to join up.’
‘Why didn’t Arthur want you to join the RAF?’
‘The WAAF, darling. Girls joined the WAAF. I suppose Arthur wanted me safely at home. He asked me to marry him one Sunday dinnertime when he was home on leave. Just before I joined up myself.’
‘So how old were you then?’
‘Just nineteen. I can see it as if it were yesterday. I was round at Arthur’s house and I’d been really looking forward to seeing him as I’d not seen him since he’d gone off to Harrogate for his initial training two months earlier.’ Madge sighed but didn’t carry on.
‘So, what was the problem? Had you gone off him?’
Madge laughed. ‘Gone off him? Well, yes, I suppose I had. He’d always been a lot keener on me than I was on him, and I was young and wanted to get involved in the war.’
‘I suppose you were about the age I went off to university,’ I mused. ‘The last thing I’d have wanted was some boy wanting me to stay at home here in Westenbury when I was off to Bath.’
Madge nodded in agreement. ‘Although, you know, it really was the norm to get married in your teens in my day. It meant we could have sex.’
‘Right.’ I felt slightly embarrassed. ‘Gosh, well, I’m gla
d I was born when I was. So, you said no to Arthur then even though you did end up married to him eventually?’
Madge nodded again. ‘So, there I was at Arthur’s house on that Sunday. I didn’t really like going round there, even though Joyce, my best friend, being Arthur’s sister, was there. His dad was a miserable old sod. I was actually quite frightened of him.
‘“Look, Madge, I’m serious, let’s get wed,” Arthur said to me once he got me alone in the front parlour. I can still remember the feel of his battledress top as he pulled me into his arms. It was rough and felt horribly scratchy against my face. “They’re not calling up married women, you know. You could stay here, then. Carry on working in t’mill, save up some money for us for when it’s all over. And it will be one day, you know…”’
‘Hard to turn someone down when they’re away to war, I suppose,’ I frowned. It was strange to think of ninety-four-year-old Madge as a young girl of nineteen.
‘Yes, it was.’ Madge looked down at her hands. ‘Although, even in 1943, most of the boys were still in training and hadn’t had a real look at any fighting. Unless you were a fighter pilot, of course – they’d been on bombing raids from the early days. So, anyway, I really didn’t fancy sitting round the dinner table with Arthur’s dad and, although I’d told my mum I probably would stay, I remember wanting to go home. Get married?’ Madge snorted almost crossly. ‘I was just nineteen, for heaven’s sake, and I wanted to join up and be a part of the great exciting mess that was the war. I’d been itching to leave for months, fed up to the back teeth of working at that bloody loom all day long. I’d been in the mill for four years and I’d had enough. And then, by 1943, it had been made compulsory for single women my age to either join up to one of the forces or the Land Army and, I can tell you, Charlie, I was ready. My dad was a tenant farmer so if I’d wanted I could have stayed at home and been a land girl on his farm. Then there was a munitions factory over at Chorley in Lancashire, though I dreaded being sent there. No, it was the WAAF for me and the sooner I enlisted rather than wait for my call-up papers to come, the better. Was that terrible of me, do you think? Only thinking of what colour uniform was best going to suit me?’ Madge grinned at me and was about to carry on when we were interrupted.
‘Do you want coffee, lovey?’ Janet, one of the more ingratiating care workers at the home, stood beaming in front of us.
‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any gin instead?’ Madge raised an eyebrow.
‘A gin, you naughty girl?’ Janet simpered, spooning a particularly cheap brand of instant coffee into two cups. ‘You’ll get me fired.’
‘Jesus,’ Madge muttered under her breath, but took the coffee as well as a plaster-pink wafer biscuit. ‘To be honest, darling, I remember feeling that particular Sunday dinnertime the same as I often do here in this place – you know, a bit stir-crazy. I tried to escape Arthur’s family. “I think my mum’s expecting me back for my dinner,” I lied as the awful smell of overcooked cabbage drifted in from the kitchen, the windows steamed up and I had the urge to run away from it all.’ Madge shuddered.
‘“Come on, lass, come and sit down. Arthur’s mum’s laid a place for you at table.” I can see Mr Booth now, towering over me, his collarless shirt open at the neck, showing a matt of greying hair, and, I could tell, in no mood to be contradicted. So I followed him into the kitchen and sat down opposite Arthur.’
Madge chewed on her pink biscuit and then put it down with distaste. ‘I don’t know why I eat these things, Charlie. Anyway, Arthur’s mum – she was a pale, nervous little thing: years of living with Arthur’s dad had sucked all the life out of her – served us the usual plates piled high with Yorkshire puddings and thick gravy. Probably every household in Midhope was eating the same thing. Certainly, if I’d been at home, that’s what we’d have been eating as well.’ Madge put down her coffee cup and assumed a man’s broad Yorkshire accent once more. ‘“So, lass, our Arthur tells me you’re thinking of joining up? Bloody mug’s game. Why do it when you could stay on at Goodners? It’s a reserved occupation for women, isn’t it, making cloth for all the uniforms? Particularly when most of the men from round here have already been enlisted?”’
Madge now assumed a young girl’s voice as she recalled the conversation from over seventy years ago. She either had a jolly good memory or she was having a great time making it all up. ‘“Oh, I want to do my bit,” I twittered. It didn’t do to argue with Herbert Booth. “And I want to see the world.”’
I laughed. ‘You sound like one of the Miss World contestants.’
Madge grinned back. ‘And find a shelter for all the homeless pussies…?’
‘You are naughty, you know. Anyway, go on.’
‘Oh, don’t you start, Charlie. So anyway, Mr Booth wipes gravy from his moustache and says “I saw the bloody world at Passchendaele and, I tell you now, it’s not a world I’d ever want anyone to see again. I’d have stopped our Arthur going off if I could. And our Joyce is going nowhere. She’s staying here where she’s safe.”
Joyce, who was always frightened of her dad, says, “I’m not going anywhere, Dad, I’ve told you. I’d be right homesick going away from home and having to share a room with a load of other girls. It was bad enough sharing with our Mary and our Ethel before they went and got wed.” She was a bit of a ninny, was Joyce. Didn’t join up and then found herself in the munitions over at Chorley. Never recovered, you know…’
‘So, what was Arthur doing while all this was going on?’
‘Getting stuck into his Yorkshire pudding. Actually, I did feel sorry for Arthur. He was embarrassed at his father’s ranting and kept trying to catch my eye, but I was working my way stolidly through my own pudding and gravy, desperate to get through the meal so I could go home, and I just kept my eyes on my plate. I remember Mr Booth monopolising the whole dinnertime and me thinking, no way am I going to stay in Westenbury and get married to Arthur. If I had agreed to marry him, stayed as a weaver and then got pregnant, which was what Arthur really wanted, then I’d probably have had to go and live with Arthur’s parents until after the war.’ Madge shuddered once more.
‘So, you joined up instead?’
‘Absolutely.’ Madge patted my hand. ‘You are a good listener, darling. It’s years since I’ve even thought about Arthur’s parents. But Arthur was determined. As soon as I could make my excuses, he walked me the mile home. I remember it had started snowing while we’d been eating and the ground was slippery and slushy. “So, Madge, how about it then? How about we get wed?” He was still going on, all the way home.
‘“Are you proposing?” I remember laughing, trying to make light of it, trying to make him see how daft he was being.
‘“Aye, I am,” Arthur said, and then, do you know what, Charlie, he suddenly gets down on one knee in the wet slush and fumbles in his battledress top pocket. He grabs at my cold hands, which I’d shoved deep into my coat, and tries to push a ring onto my finger.’
‘Really? Gosh, I bet that frightened you.’ I had a sudden vision of Josh Lee going down on one knee just as I was about to leave for Bath University and my architecture course. Not that he had. I wasn’t even going out with him then. As far as I remember we’d had a couple of snogging sessions round the back of the Jolly Sailor and then he’d dumped me for Nicci Fellowes, a sophisticated undergraduate with a gamine hairdo and a non-existent bust. ‘What’s she got that I haven’t?’ I’d sobbed to Daisy as I played and replayed James Blunt’s ‘You’re Beautiful’ until even I was sick of it. ‘A padded bra, perhaps?’ Daisy had replied drily before drowning out James with Shakira and ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ and belly dancing along the corridor to the bathroom.
‘Totally frightened me, you’re right,’ Madge agreed. ‘I know a lot of the girls in the mill would have loved it, but not me. Anyway, “Right, we’re engaged,” Arthur says. “I don’t want to go back without you promising me you’ll at least think about marrying me. It’d make it so much easier if I know you’re wearing my ring
and you’re not going off with any other bloke. I really couldn’t bear that, you know, Madge.”
‘And, Charlie, I remember looking down at the ring and then down at Arthur, who was still on one knee. I knew nothing about jewellery, but even I could tell this wasn’t some ten-bob tat from Woolworths down in Midhope. It was a brilliantly cut ten-pointed diamond surrounded by two smaller unusual oblong diamonds and three round ones.’
I glanced down at Madge’s ring finger. ‘But you’re not wearing it?’
‘No, I’m not. Anyway, it was far too big for my frozen finger and kept slipping round. “For heaven’s sake, Arthur,” I said. “Get up. You’re going to freeze to the ground down there,” and I took off the ring and handed it back to him. I had to be quite cross with him, you know. “I don’t want to get married to you or anyone,” I said. “I’m going to join the WAAF.”
‘“Just wait until you’re called up,” Arthur kept on pleading. “Why not do that?” And he tried to put the ring back on my finger.
‘“Arthur, where’ve you got this ring from?” I asked. I mean, Charlie, I’d never been given anything like that ring before.
‘“I’ve been saving up,” Arthur says to me. “I’ve been wanting to give you something ever since we started going round together.”
‘“But you did,” I said. He’d given me the most beautiful little gold watch for my nineteenth birthday. Heaven knows where he’d got the money from for that.
‘So, Arthur then says, “If we were married then you wouldn’t have to join up. And we could have a baby.”
‘Well, I had to get a bit cross again then.
‘So, then Arthur says to me, “Promise me you’ll keep the ring? Keep it safe?”
‘Well, what could I say? “But we’re not engaged, Arthur,” I finally said. “We’re not getting married and don’t you go telling anybody any different.”’
I looked across at Madge. Her eyes were closing and her voice was becoming fainter. She’d obviously tired herself out with all this talk of the past. I gently took the blanket that had fallen to the floor and wrapped it round her knees.
Coming Home To Holly Close Farm Page 9