‘Robert and Stephen, they’re both in the army, in the Royal Dorset Regiment. At the moment, though, they’re both on leave,’ said Mrs Denham. ‘I think I just heard someone coming in. Let’s go back downstairs.’
The man downstairs was in his early twenties, Cassie guessed. Dark haired and six feet tall at least, he had to duck under the beams to walk across the kitchen.
He looked a mess, she thought. His trousers had great tears across the knees. His old tweed jacket was all frayed along the cuffs and seams. ‘Mum,’ he said, ‘I’m starving. When will supper be?’
‘In half an hour or so,’ said Mrs Denham, and then she turned to Cassie. ‘Robert, this is Miss Taylor. She’s kindly going to help us on the farm.’
‘Really?’ said the man.
He looked her up and down. Quite rudely, Cassie thought, although now she noticed that his eyes were the most striking she had ever seen. They were large and dark, with long black lashes, rather like Clark Gable’s, she decided – you could drown yourself in eyes like these.
‘Good evening, Miss Taylor,’ he managed to grunt at last.
‘Hello,’ said Cassie, still staring back at him.
He was quite good-looking, she supposed. Well-made, broad-shouldered, with a head of black or dark brown hair to match his equally dark eyes. Yes, he was very attractive – if you liked that sort of thing.
But, Holy Mother of God, the face on him – as long as from Castle Bromwich to Halesowen! He must have lost a quid and found a farthing.
He grumbled off upstairs to change his clothes. Or that was what she thought he’d said. Just like his mother, he talked as if he was a member of the Royal Family.
But what they had to swank and be so posh about, when they lived in this tiny little house, Cassie couldn’t imagine.
They heard him clunking round above them. But then he stuck his head back round the door.
Cassie glanced up. The clunking was still going on, together with a bit of cursing now.
She frowned at him, perplexed.
He came into the room and smiled in welcome, holding out his hand. ‘Hello, I’m Stephen Denham,’ he began. ‘You must be Miss Taylor, our new land girl?’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ said Cassie. She looked up at the ceiling once again.
‘Oh, didn’t Mum say?’ asked Stephen, and he grinned. ‘I’m sorry, there are two of us. We’re twins.’
Chapter Two
Mrs Denham sent Cassie to her room to get unpacked and, as she emptied out her shopping bag, she heard the twins discussing her in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs.
‘She’s very skinny,’ muttered one of them – she thought it was the grumpy twin. ‘I reckon she’s a slum kid. She looks pasty-faced and feeble. I’ll bet you she’ll be useless, and she’ll be bone idle, too.’
‘Mum will fatten her up and crack the whip,’ his brother told him, making Cassie shudder. Then they went into the kitchen. After she had put away her things, tidied her dark blonde hair a bit and dabbed some powder on her pasty face, Cassie went downstairs.
‘This is my husband, Alex,’ Mrs Denham said, smiling at a man who had grey streaks in his dark hair, and who had obviously just walked in, because he still had snowflakes on his shoulders.
‘It’s Miss Taylor, isn’t it?’ The man held out his hand, and Cassie sighed – another toff, she thought. But she took Mr Denham’s hand and shook it firmly. At least he smiled nicely, and – just like his wife’s – his eyes were kind.
Mrs Denham helped him take his coat off. She brushed the snow out of his hair with gentle fingers, and then she took his hands in hers and rubbed them, to warm them up again.
‘How are you feeling, Alex?’ she enquired, and Cassie heard concern, or it might have even been anxiety, in her voice.
‘I’m fine, my dear,’ said Mr Denham.
‘You’re better than you were this morning, then?’
‘Yes, much better, thank you.’
‘Good,’ said Mrs Denham, but she didn’t sound convinced, and Cassie wondered why.
Then they started supper, and it was a nightmare. Mrs Denham filled Cassie’s plate with stew, and this was mostly orange lumps – carrots, she supposed, or maybe they were swedes or turnips, who could tell – and chunks of dark brown, chewy meat.
There was a dish of baked potatoes, and these didn’t taste too bad, even though they were full of scabby bits. She couldn’t eat the skin. It was too tough. She didn’t know human beings could eat potato skin. At home, they gave their peelings to the scrawny chickens Mrs Gray across the road kept in her yard.
She sighed and thought how much she fancied a plate of fish and chips. A couple of bangers, or a nice pork pie.
The whole plate swam with gravy, and if there was one thing Cassie hated, it was gravy. Its slimy, greasy oiliness always made her feel like throwing up. But now she had to try to force it down. What was this disgusting greyish-yellowish-whitish stuff floating round in it, she wondered, poking at it crossly. It looked like lumps of snot.
Mrs Denham saw her prodding it with her fork. ‘I hope you like pearl barley,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s nutritious and it’s very filling. We use a lot of it in soups and stews.’
‘Yes, it’s nice,’ said Cassie, feeling sick.
‘You should eat your potato skin,’ chimed in the grumpy twin, who was gnawing at his own and talking with his mouth full. ‘It’s full of vitamins. It’s good for you.’
Cassie gave the grumpy twin her meanest, dirtiest look.
He responded with a sort of grin, and a comment to the effect that he supposed it could go into swill for Mr Hobson’s pigs.
‘Who’s Mr Hobson?’ Cassie asked him.
‘A smallholder in Charton,’ Stephen said, when Robert didn’t bother to reply. ‘He keeps pigs and goats and chickens, too. He and Mrs Hobson have a dozen children. The ones who live in Charton all work on the smallholding. Mr Hobson likes to get away from family life occasionally, and sometimes works for us.’
Somehow, Cassie managed to eat the horrid stew. The pudding which followed wasn’t quite so vile. Jam roll boiled in a linen cloth, red and white and served with yellow custard, it didn’t look particularly inviting, but didn’t taste too bad.
She’d have loved a square or two of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk, the chocolate which her granny had always bought her on her birthday when she was a child.
‘Rob and I are going out tonight, Miss Taylor. Do you want to come?’ asked Stephen, as she worried a back tooth with her tongue, attempting to dislodge a shred of meat.
‘Where are you going?’ Cassie asked him.
‘Stephen, darling, give the girl a chance to settle down.’ Mrs Denham gathered up the dishes and took them over to the Belfast sink.
‘But she’ll need to get to know her way around the district,’ Stephen told his mother. ‘You can’t send her out tomorrow morning and assume she’ll find the stables and the paddock and the road into the village by herself.’
‘I suppose not.’ Mrs Denham shrugged. ‘But please wash the dishes before you do go out, and you must wrap up warm. It’s freezing hard again tonight. I’ve never known a January like it. There’s snow six inches deep in the top field. You’d think we were on Dartmoor, not in Dorset.’
Robert stood up and slouched towards the sink. He picked up the black kettle, poured hot water into the bowl of dishes, added a lump of soda from a jar and started scrubbing energetically.
Cassie took a tea-towel from the range. She dried the plates and dishes, and then the other twin put them away, making up for his brother’s silence with a stream of chatter.
‘Why did you choose to come to Dorset?’ Stephen asked, as he stacked the plates in wooden racks.
‘I didn’t choose,’ said Cassie grimly. ‘I told the recruiting office woman I’d go anywhere.’ She shrugged. ‘My granny was going on at me to leave the factory, and to get out of Brum. So I took the first job they offered me.’
‘You’ve worked on f
arms before, though, haven’t you?’
‘No,’ admitted Cassie.
‘In a market garden, then?’ asked Stephen.
‘What’s one of them when it’s at home?’
‘We asked for someone with experience.’ Mrs Denham frowned. ‘Miss Taylor, what exactly – ’
‘I had to get out of Smethwick, Mrs Denham!’ Cassie met Rose Denham’s gaze, and reddened. ‘All right, I admit it. I don’t know the first thing about farming. But I’ll be quick to learn, I promise you. I do know how to work. I’ve spent the past two years in factories, doing twelve hour shifts, filling shells and making bits of aeroplanes and tanks. You’ll get your money’s worth.’
‘My dear Miss Taylor, I intend to do so.’
But then Rose Denham smiled, and there was warmth and humour in her smile. Cassie decided, she’s a tough old bird and she might talk like Lady Muck, but she’ll be fair and decent.
So, fingers twisted, it would be all right.
‘What’s your first name?’ Stephen asked. ‘If you’re going to live here for a while, we can’t call you Miss Taylor all the time.’
‘It’s Cassie.’
‘Cassie – that’s unusual,’ said Rose Denham, her dark eyebrows raised in arched enquiry.
‘Yes, well.’ Cassie shrugged. She wasn’t going to tell them all the story of her life, or not yet, anyway. ‘It’s just a name.’
The twins and Cassie put on coats and scarves and hats and gloves, and then set off across the frozen fields. Stephen told her they were going to the nearest pub, which was in Charton, where she’d got off the train.
While they had been eating, there had been another fall of snow, covering all the footprints to the cottage, and making the whole world look new again. The clouds which must have gathered had blown away again, and now a round white moon shone from a purple velvet sky.
‘It’s so pretty!’ Cassie cried, as she gazed delighted at the moonlit meadows, at the cotton-wool-topped hedges, and the stands of stark black white-rimed trees. ‘We don’t get snow in Birmingham. Well, that’s a lie, we do, but it soon goes all mucky and it turns to slush. It’s – ’
‘It’s a bloody nuisance,’ Robert growled, and glared at Cassie. Then he stomped off ahead, into the night.
‘Holy Mother, what have I said now?’ demanded Cassie.
‘Nothing, Cassie.’ Stephen sighed. ‘I’m sorry, but Robert’s been like this for ages, and we can’t do anything with him. He wishes he was in the Western Desert, fighting Jerry – and so do we all.’
‘How much longer will he be on leave, then?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Stephen. ‘But he has a medical next week, and I sincerely hope he passes it.’
‘Me too,’ murmured Cassie, but only to herself.
‘The trouble is, he’s bored,’ continued Stephen. ‘We’ve been at home too long.’
‘So why are you at home?’ asked Cassie.
‘We’ve both been on sick leave since we copped it at Dunkirk. When we came out of hospital, they sent us back to Dorset. We’ve been here ever since. We help around the farm. Well, Robert does his bit, and more. But I must admit I’m not much use.’
‘What happened to you?’ asked Cassie. ‘If you don’t mind my asking,’ she added hastily.
‘I don’t mind,’ said Stephen. ‘My mother’s bound to tell you anyway, in vivid detail. It’s her way of coping, droning on. But – in a nutshell – we were with the British Expeditionary Force. We got shot up in France. Then we were evacuated. We came home in separate boats, but both of them got hit by German planes.
‘Robert had a broken arm, a bullet in his shoulder, and a piece of shrapnel in his chest that just missed his heart, but pierced his lung. Now, he’s nearly fit, so he’ll soon be going back to get blown up again. Me – well, I’m resigned to having a desk job.’
‘Why?’
‘I can’t go back on active service. I got hit on the head, and now I have blackouts and epileptic fits.’
‘We had an epileptic kid at school,’ said Cassie, nodding. ‘He had funny turns. He’d be standing next to you one minute, chatting away as natural as ninepence, but then he’d fall down, jerking. Sometimes, he’d wet himself. I was our class monitor, so I always had to get the spoon to stick between his teeth, to stop him biting off his tongue.’
‘I wish you’d been here last Wednesday, then,’ said Stephen, looking grave. ‘I had a turn myself. When I came round again, the cat was curled up on my lap, purring and chewing something.’
‘You’re kidding!’ Cassie cried in horror.
‘So keep your spoon at action stations, yes? In fact, I feel a little strange right now.’
Cassie began to panic. But then she saw his grin. She pushed his shoulder, grinning back at him. This bloke might be a nob, she thought. But, like his mother, Stephen Denham was all right.
‘How long have you lived in Dorset?’ she enquired.
‘Since I was ten,’ said Stephen. ‘In those days, there were five of us, my parents and my brother and my sister.’
‘It must have been a bit of a squash while you were growing up, with all of you crammed into that small cottage?’
‘We haven’t always lived there. When we first came to Dorset, we lived in Melbury House. It was my dad’s ancestral home, and it was big enough for half a dozen families. But we had a fire there, and we had to move into the cottage.’
‘So that burned-down place I passed, when I came along the lane – that was your house, yes?’ asked Cassie, shuddering. ‘It must have been horrible for you, to lose your home like that?’
‘Yes, it was rather rough on Mum and Dad, but the actual fire was exciting.’ Stephen’s dark eyes glittered in the moonlight. ‘It’s quite something, Cassie, to see a huge, great place go up like that, like some enormous funeral pyre. As it was burning down, the fire made great, red caverns – whole new worlds of scarlet, black and gold – and I remember wondering, what would it be like, to walk in fire?’
‘You’re giving me the shivers.’ Cassie trembled. ‘I hate it when the sirens go, and bombs start coming down, and you see the flames and know that some poor bugger’s bought it.’
‘Well, now you can relax a bit,’ said Stephen, and he smiled. ‘We don’t get raids in Dorset. Or not here in the sticks, at any rate – believe you me.’
Robert couldn’t believe it.
They had asked the Ministry of Labour for someone with experience. Someone who had worked on dairy farms. Someone who could turn her hand to anything. Someone who could take over from him when he was recalled to active service.
So who had turned up?
Some idiot girl who looked about fifteen. A skinny little creature, round-shouldered and with sparrow legs in wrinkled cotton stockings, who didn’t look as if she would be able to lift a bag of flour, let alone a sack of cattle feed.
She had a sweet and very pretty face – he’d noticed straight away. So soon she would be smirking, flouncing, flirting all around the villages, making eyes at anything in trousers, at teenaged boys and fathers who hadn’t been called up. She’d be annoying girlfriends, sisters, wives. She would be getting herself in trouble. She –
Stop that now, he told himself, as he ground his teeth and as the snow got in his boots, melting in chilly puddles in his socks. She’s just a girl, an ordinary girl, and you don’t know anything about her, perhaps she goes to church three times on Sundays and leads a blameless life.
She might be stronger than she looks.
I doubt it, said his other self. She’ll be a liability, you’ll see. We’ll need a depth charge to get her out of bed these winter mornings. She won’t be any good at milking, and she won’t be any use with chickens. She’ll be afraid of horses, and she won’t be able to drive the pony trap.
She’ll just get in the way.
He stumped into the pub and glowered at the barman. He wished he had the time and money to get drunk tonight.
Cassie enjoyed the walk across the fields.
The moonlight shining on the freshly-fallen snow made the whole place look like fairyland. Stephen told her silly jokes and helped her clamber over stiles and jump across the ditches. He caught her when she stumbled, which she often did.
When they reached the village, they were cold but glowing and went straight into the pub. As they pushed through the cosy, smoky fug, Cassie was still giggling at something he had said.
Stephen’s brother was sitting at a table in the corner with his back to them, and from the shaking of his shoulders she thought he must be laughing. A dark-haired girl of maybe twenty, Cassie guessed, was sitting sideways on to him.
They turned to look at Cassie and their smiles froze on their faces. ‘Come on, Cassie,’ Stephen whispered as he pushed her forward. ‘Rob’s a miserable so-and-so, but he doesn’t bite.’
Cassie saw the girl was wearing navy corduroy slacks, a soft, white jersey that had clearly cost a lot of money, and she had a gorgeous string of pearls around her neck. She wore bright scarlet lipstick which didn’t really suit her, and was smoking, flicking ash on to the table top instead of in the ashtray by her side.
‘This is Frances Ashford,’ Stephen said, drawing up a couple more chairs and motioning to Cassie to sit down. ‘This is Cassie Taylor, Fran. She’s come to work for us.’
‘Golly, how exciting.’ Frances flicked some more ash off her glowing cigarette and stared at Cassie balefully. ‘She doesn’t look the bucolic type to me.’
‘Come again?’ said Cassie, thinking, Holy Virgin, are they all nobs round here? ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘You’re tiny, and you don’t look fit and strong enough for farm work.’
‘I might be small,’ said Cassie. ‘But I’ve worked in factories making Spitfires, and I’m very strong.’
‘How old are you, anyway – thirteen, fourteen, fifteen?’
‘I’m nineteen,’ muttered Cassie, thinking – what a cow. ‘How about you, then – thirty, forty, fifty?’
‘Ladies, ladies, please!’ Stephen patted Cassie’s shoulder. ‘How about a drink? Cassie, I’m afraid it’s gin or beer – or lemonade.’
The Penny Bangle Page 2