Coming Home To Holly Close Farm

by Julie Houston

  ‘Well, if that would make you feel better, go ahead.’ Daisy said calmly. ‘It’ll cost you a fortune that you don’t have in legal fees, no architecture firm will touch you again if you’re seen as a troublemaker and, at the end of the day, nothing has been published here that’s not the truth.’ Daisy slopped milk into two mugs of coffee and pushed one in my direction. ‘I actually think, Charlie,’ she went on, looking me up and down, ‘that what you’ve just done in the last half-hour is the best you could have done. You look fantastic, a professional, ready to meet with your next client.’ She glanced at the clock once more and laughed ‘A trifle early, I have to say but, Charlie, this is the real you. Sitting around in smelly, baggy trackies with hairy legs and a chin to match, wailing and moaning over an ex-boyfriend, isn’t the right way to go about your career. You’re bloody clever: this article proves that. What better way to show Dominic sodding Abraham what he’s lost than by coming up with the most fantastic designs for David – Lord of the North – Henderson? And by the way, take this article with you and show it to David and Seb. Don’t whinge and moan and say “poor little me”. Casually drop it into the conversation and move on.’

  When I didn’t say anything, Daisy tutted. ‘Charlie, if what you say is true, you’ve won an award for architectural innovation. Be proud. The truth will come out somewhere along the line. It always does. I never won any award for coming up with a brilliantly clever way to get “cunnilingus” into a sentence over the aeroplane Tannoy. I got the bloody sack.’

  *

  I’d been up at Holly Close Farm quite a lot over the previous weeks, taking more measurements where I was able, drawing little sketches and then, back at the bungalow adding to and amending the plans I’d already shown Josh Lee. So now I took off my jacket, rolled up my shirtsleeves and spent the next couple of hours going over these initial thoughts, ready to share them with the Hendersons later that day.

  Mum had suggested, as we’d be heading back to Westenbury, we should pick up Madge and then call in at home and have a sandwich with her before heading just out of the village to where David Henderson lived.

  She’d actually prepared Welsh rarebit for us for lunch. ‘Your granny Madge taught me how to make this when I was a little girl.’ She turned to where Daisy was helping Madge out of her red coat and matching scarf. Do you remember, Granny?’

  ‘I certainly do,’ Madge smiled. ‘It was probably the one thing I got right when I was a cook during the war. Sergeant Briscoe regularly used to berate me for not having a light touch with pastry. I’ve bought ready-made for years now and tell everyone it’s my own. Much better than all that fart-arsing around with flour and fat and lifting it out of the bowl until it’s like breadcrumbs.’

  Daisy and I grinned at each other, both at Madge’s pretence with pastry as well as her choice of words. How many other ninety-four-year-olds said ‘arse’ and ‘fart’?

  ‘I don’t know how you remember all that stuff back to the war,’ Mum sighed. ‘I can’t remember anything, these days.’

  ‘That’s because you only remember what you’re interested in. You’re so into your pottery at the moment, that’s all that matters to you.’ Daisy patted Mum on the arm.

  ‘That’s a bit unfair, Daisy. I’m interested in everything you girls are up to. But, d’you know, I go upstairs and I haven’t a clue what I’ve gone up for. Or I put the kettle on and totally forget to actually make the coffee I’d planned to make. It drives your father mad.’

  When Daisy and I laughed, Mum tutted and turned back to grating cheese. ‘You wait, Daisy Maddison, you’ll be menopausal yourself one day. You wait until you’re awake half the night with hot flushes and you go to the hairdresser and as you’re waiting, sitting in the chair, the Saturday girl comes and says, “Oh, I didn’t realise you’ve already been washed, Mrs Maddison,” and I have to say, “I haven’t.”’

  Daisy and I burst out laughing again. ‘Oh, Mum, you poor old thing,’ I said, going to give her a hug. ‘It’ll get better once you’re through it, won’t it? Can’t be for ever, surely?’

  ‘Well, after that, it’ll be all downhill to Alzheimer’s,’ Mum said gloomily. ‘Oh bollocks, this bloody rabbit’s almost ready but I’ve forgotten to switch on the grill for the toast.’

  Five minutes later, Daisy and I had made the toast and we were able to eat. ‘Granny Madge has been telling us all about meeting a boyfriend she had called James, Mum. You know, during the war?’

  ‘Oh?’ Mum shook her head slightly and looked worried. Was this something else she’d been told about and forgotten?

  ‘Don’t worry, Kate,’ Madge patted Mum’s hand. ‘I’ve never spoken about him before. The girls found his old RAF badge and a photograph of him when they were looking for my red coat.’ She put down her knife and fork and said, seriously, ‘The whole story is going to come out once the house is sold. I’d be surprised if David Henderson hasn’t already been raking through the past.’

  Mum stopped eating and looked at Madge. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Granny. I seem to be left out of everything these days.’ She was still cross with us about making fun of her and I had an awful feeling she was going to cry.

  ‘Why on earth would David Henderson be interested in an old boyfriend of yours, Granny?’ I looked across at Daisy, who raised her eyebrows and shrugged in my direction.

  ‘It’s all a bit complicated, girls, and I need to think about it, bit by bit, before I tell you what eventually happened. The whole thing doesn’t put me in a particularly good light and you’ll understand why I’ve kept it to myself and not been able to tell Nancy the rest of it. After that first evening, James and I saw each other whenever we could, which, as you can imagine, because he was based in Cambridgeshire and I was in the middle of London wasn’t all that easy…’

  16

  Francesca sat opposite Madge in the tiny galley kitchen the WAAF cooks had to themselves and, while Fran lit a Lucky Strike and inhaled deeply, Madge sat on her chair in her striped WAAF-issue pyjamas, legs tucked up beneath her, and simply grinned at Fran. Although not yet nine in the morning, the kitchen was already warm and stuffy, and Fran sighed before languidly walking over to the window and opening it as far as was humanly possible without falling out. She continued to pull on her cigarette, blowing smoke out of the window while watching pedestrians down below on Oxford Street going about their usual and, in Madge’s eyes now that all she could think about was the previous evening and James, totally mundane Saturday morning tasks.

  Fran turned and folded her arms. ‘Look, Madge, I know James is rather lovely, my darling. If he wasn’t my cousin I’d probably be a little bit in love with him myself.’ She ground the stub of the cigarette into the ashtray on the windowsill. ‘But pilots in Bomber Command are not really a good option, you know. They’re either in training, waiting around to fly, flying, missing… or dead. They live on their nerves and on borrowed time.’

  ‘He is rather lovely, isn’t he?’ Madge continued to grin widely, stretching her arms up to meet the ceiling. ‘Tell me everything about him, Fran. I don’t even know how old he is, his middle name, his birthday…’

  Fran sighed and moved over to the cranky gas-fuelled geyser that was their sole means of water for tea – the water was never quite boiling and thus tea tended to be drunk through a scummy film – and refilled the heavy brown teapot that was in constant use by the WAAF cooks. ‘Twenty-three; George Edward; 25 August. Look, Madge, I don’t want you thinking you’re in love with James…’ Fran broke off from making tea and came back to sit opposite Madge. ‘You’ve got Arthur. I shouldn’t have pretended to be an officer last night in order to get you back upstairs. You two obviously needed to work things out. He looks nice…’ Fran trailed off again as Madge raised an eyebrow: both women knew that, compared to James Montgomery-West, poor Arthur didn’t stand a chance. ‘You’re not going to like what I’m about to say, Madge.’

  ‘Say it anyway, Fran. Unless James is married with thr
ee kids, you won’t put me off him. To be honest, even if he was married, I’m not sure I’d be able to keep away from him.’ Madge, realising what she’d just said and how it must make her look in Fran’s eyes, reddened slightly but determinedly held Fran’s gaze.

  ‘All right. James is actually Viscount Montgomery-West. His father – my uncle – is the Earl of Beaconscliffe, probably better known as Lord Montgomery-West.’

  ‘Right.’ Madge felt her heart quicken before dropping somewhere in the region of her stomach. ‘Right. All right. I know what you’re thinking now, Fran.’

  ‘Madge,’ Fran said gently, ‘James’ life, before this damned war, was all mapped out for him. Eton, Cambridge, some sort of business in the city and then, probably, following his father and grandfather into government.’ Fran ticked each one off on her fingers. When Madge didn’t say anything, but just looked at her, Fran continued, ‘And then engagement and marriage to someone who will further the family line, if you get my drift, darling.’

  Madge felt the bubble on which she’d floated the previous evening and through the hot, sleepless night in her attic bedroom, burst. She felt tears threaten. ‘And what you’re saying, Francesca, is that a poor milkman’s daughter from up north wouldn’t exactly further anyone’s family, never mind a lord’s?’

  ‘No, I’m not saying that.’ Fran’s conciliatory tone was unable to mask the lie. ‘I’m really sorry, Madge.’ Fran lit another cigarette and then smiled. ‘Look, darling, have some fun with James. Enjoy yourself. Go out for dinner with him. Sleep with him, for heaven’s sake, but, I’m just warning you, either bloody Hitler or the Berkshire lot – and to be honest I don’t know which is worse – will eventually take him from you.’

  ‘Maybe what you’ve just suggested I do with James was all I was thinking of doing,’ Madge snapped defiantly. ‘I don’t know where you’ve got this ridiculous idea that I might be thinking of marrying him, for heaven’s sake, Fran. I only met the man last night.’

  ‘You looked perfect together,’ Fran smiled, relenting at Madge’s tone. She hesitated. ‘I bumped into James walking back from seeing you home. I shouldn’t be saying this, but he was as starry-eyed as you.’

  Madge wandered over to the window and, like Fran had done a few minutes earlier, gazed down onto Oxford Street and beyond to Oxford Circus, taking in the upper right section of Peter Robinson’s department store whose neo-classical façade, badly damaged during the Blitz, was now boarded up and used to display the posters and hoardings that had become a familiar part of war-torn London. Despite Fran telling her to get down in case she fell, Madge leaned out further, loving the feel of the sun on her face and the heady combination of smells: of petrol from the cars and big red buses below, and the heat rising up from the warm pavements. Her heart began to beat faster as a figure below in RAF blue – one of many on this warm Saturday morning – came into view and stopped directly under their building, peering up while shading the sun from his eyes.

  ‘Which one is it?’ Fran sighed, joining her at the window. ‘James or Arthur?’

  ‘James,’ Madge laughed in excitement, backing away from the window and heading for the kitchen door.

  ‘Well, you can’t go down there in your nightclothes,’ Fran sighed again. ‘Bad enough in a stunning black peignoir, but in WAAF pyjamas, absolutely not, darling.’

  The wonderful thing about being cook in an RAF training school in the middle of London was that, unlike her counterparts on RAF bases up and down the country, Madge was mainly free at the weekends and, if not actually condoned, the wearing of civvies off duty was usually turned a blind eye to by the NCOs in charge. Some weekends, when extra courses were put on in the requisitioned building then of course she was on duty, but this particular weekend, apart from a combined RAF and WAAF Met officers’ meeting on the Sunday, where she would make and serve afternoon tea, she was free to come and go as she pleased. Madge knew that any day she could be transferred to a base where her life would not be as congenial, especially as she wasn’t Sergeant Briscoe’s favourite, but for now she had to enjoy what she had and make the most of it.

  *

  ‘Where did you go?’ Daisy asked, eyes wide at the thought of Madge as a young girl, running down the stairs of the building and out onto the streets of war-torn London. ‘It all sounds so romantic, but weren’t you afraid of bombs?’

  Madge smiled. ‘I suppose people who didn’t live through the war assume London was being bombed every minute of every day. During the Blitz, which was before I joined up, then, yes, London was in a mess, but by 1943, when I was stationed there, Hitler seemed to avoid London, probably because of the anti-aircraft guns, and we had weeks when the sirens didn’t go off.’

  ‘I bet your mum was worried about you being in London, though,’ I said, glancing across at Mum, who’d abandoned her pudding – a Mars bar ice cream – so riveted was she at Madge’s story. ‘Do you remember how you were nervous at first about me being in London, Mum? You know with all the terrorist stuff?’

  ‘Oh God, yes I was,’ Mum agreed, finally finishing her ice cream and licking her fingers before moving to fill the kettle. ‘Told you that you mustn’t sit next to anyone on the tube with a backpack. Have you time for coffee before your meeting with David Henderson, girls? I wish I was coming with you – he’s rather gorgeous, you know.’

  ‘Come if you want, Mum,’ Daisy said. ‘You know Mandy Henderson now that you’ve had that commission from her. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind one extra.’

  ‘Not very professional, is it, taking your mother along to your first business meeting?’ Mum smiled. ‘Anyway, I have work to do. So, just time for a coffee and more of the James story, Granny?’

  Madge nodded and smiled.

  *

  She was suddenly shy and observed James for a few seconds as he stood, looking up, unaware of her scrutiny. She walked across to him and touched his arm. He jumped slightly and then grinned.

  ‘Did you see me?’ he asked. ‘I thought if I waited here long enough, you’d eventually come down this way. I was going to try to telephone you, but the box over there…’ James indicated with a nod of his head the red telephone box a hundred yards away ‘… has a queue a mile long.’

  ‘I saw you,’ Madge smiled. She was wearing a yellow cotton dress her mum had made for her the previous summer. It was her favourite dress and she knew the colour suited her.

  ‘You look lovely, Madge. Like a sunflower.’ James bent to kiss her cheek. ‘I’m afraid I’ve only a couple of hours. My forty-eight-hour leave finishes at five this afternoon and there aren’t many trains.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘What would you like to do?’

  Madge didn’t care what they did as long as she could spend these few hours with him, holding his hand, knowing that, for the moment at least, he was safe.

  ‘Have you been to the zoo?’ he asked, stroking Madge’s hair.

  She laughed. ‘The zoo?’

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid it’s not as good as before the war – apparently, they had to kill all the snakes in case the reptile-house was bombed and they all got out and slithered into the houses in Regent’s Park – but, it’s a bargain on Saturdays: half-price to all the Forces.’ James grinned at her and took her hand.

  She laughed again. ‘Come on then, what are we waiting for? Being a right Yorkshire lass, I love a bargain.’

  ‘Say that again.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A right Yorkshire lass.’ He laughed. ‘I can’t tell you how much I love your accent.’

  ‘Well, you must be the only one round here,’ Madge said tartly. ‘Usually I get laughed at when I say, “I’m off for a bath” instead of “barth”.’

  ‘Are you all right walking?’ James glanced down at Madge’s feet. She’d abandoned her regulation-issue black lace-ups, her legs were bare and she’d borrowed a pair of Francesca’s white Mary Janes.

  ‘Francesca lent me these,’ Madge grinned. ‘She said I couldn’t possibly wear my black uniform sho
es with a yellow summer dress. I’ll be fine walking, come on.’

  They strolled through the streets of the city already thronged with service personnel as well as its residents, intent on shopping or simply being outside on such a glorious day when the reality of war was pushed, for the moment, from minds. Forty minutes later they were walking through the open gates of Regent’s Park.

  ‘Oh, what a mess. I’d no idea.’ Madge stopped in her tracks and looked around the park, where rubble from buildings destroyed in the Blitz had been dumped on the lawns.

  ‘Had to put it somewhere, I suppose,’ James grimaced before glancing down at Madge. ‘Your feet are hurting, aren’t they? There’s no way you’re going to be able to walk round the zoo – what’s left of it, anyway.’

  Madge sat down on a remaining area of grass and unbuckled Fran’s shoes, loving the feel of the warm grass between her toes. ‘Sorry,’ she said, pulling a face as she saw the blister on her right foot, ‘I should have put my lace-ups on.’

  James sat down beside her and examined the blister. ‘Ouch, that must hurt. Stay here and I’ll see if I can find us some tea. There did used to be a café in Queen Mary’s gardens.’ He jumped up, abandoned his jacket with Madge, and set off at a sprint while Madge gazed after him, loving the sight of his blue-shirted back as he disappeared across the rubble-strewn grass. She gazed round at the others in the park, at those who, like them, had managed to find somewhere to sit and, in an effort to calm her racing pulse, endeavoured to concentrate on what the other women were wearing. But the brightly coloured summer dresses, the pinks, reds and yellows worn instead of the ubiquitous navy and khaki, morphed into one single rainbow of colour and she had to dig her nails into the palms of her hands in an effort to calm herself and concentrate on what was in front of her.