Christmas at Emmerdale

by Pamela Bell

  They had tea served in delicate porcelain cups with dainty scones and fish paste sandwiches. Rose told herself not to remember sitting next to Ralph, shimmering with happiness because he had told her how pretty she was looking.

  Violet prattled on about her connections and events she had been to before the war. Rose had little to contribute, having never been a house guest at a castle or danced at a ball. She had never been to London, or drunk champagne on a yacht in Nice or … or done anything, Rose thought, trying not to feel resentful. She was fairly sure Sylvia had done none of those things either, but Sylvia was smiling and prompting their hostess with questions and looking suitably impressed. Rose wanted to stand up and scream. How would Violet showing off help the war effort?

  At last Violet put her teacup down and announced that they should all ‘get to work’. This involved traipsing back into the hall and along to the dining room where they spent an hour cutting up gauze into strips, spreading them the length of the magnificent mahogany table and rolling each up tightly before securing the end in a neat knot.

  Bored and frustrated, Rose let her mind wander. As in the drawing room, long windows opened onto the terrace, but from the dining room Rose could see the great cedar tree where they had picnicked in the shade earlier that summer when she had been so innocently happy just to have Ralph nearby.

  Oh, she was being tiresome! Rose scolded herself angrily. It wasn’t as if she had suffered any great tragedy since then. She had just had to accept that Ralph loved Maggie. She would survive – but what was she going to do without Ralph to love?

  ‘Rose,’ Edith’s voice held a warning note, and Rose jerked her attention back to the gauze strip creeping along the table towards her as she rolled it up. The roll was lumpy and bulged out to one side because she hadn’t been concentrating on keeping the sides straight.

  ‘Sorry,’ Rose muttered and unwound the strip so that she could start again.

  ‘My dear Mrs Haywood, we hear such dreadful things happening at the training camp,’ Mrs Dauntry put in. ‘You must be so worried about Rose.’

  Edith looked surprised. ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘The men are very rough,’ said Mrs Dauntry, chins wobbling. ‘Lord Kitchener has been so anxious to recruit soldiers that they say the most unsavoury types are being accepted.’

  ‘I have heard there have been a few thefts,’ Edith admitted.

  ‘It is not just the thefts, Mrs Haywood. They are encouraging immoral behaviour amongst the young women. With almost all the young men in the villages signed up, of course the girls are looking for company – and more,’ she added with a significant look. ‘There have been shocking goings-on.’ She glanced at Rose and Sylvia, obviously deciding with reluctance that she couldn’t elaborate. ‘Some of the things I have heard aren’t fit for young ladies’ ears.’

  ‘There has been fighting, too,’ Sylvia added eagerly.

  Rose remembered the brawl her father had broken up outside the Woolpack. ‘Some of the local men have been fighting too,’ she pointed out. ‘It’s not just the men from the training camp. We shouldn’t be complaining about them, surely? They’re going out to fight for us like John and Ralph.’

  ‘Oh, Rose, my dear, you are so very young,’ Mrs Dauntry said with a patronising smile.

  ‘No one is complaining about their bravery,’ said Edith with her usual quiet good sense before Rose could retort. ‘It is their behaviour when they are allowed to leave the camp that causes some concern. I believe Charles has spoken to the camp commander about it.’

  ‘Well, I for one will be glad to get away,’ said Violet and Mrs Haddington looked dismayed.

  ‘Oh, Lady Miffield, you’re not leaving us, are you?’

  ‘I am, I’m afraid. Miffield Hall has been requisitioned as a hospital.’ She looked around the dining room with its magnificent fireplace at one end and the portraits of Verney ancestors glaring down from the wall opposite the windows. ‘It’s rather grim to think of this filled with hospital beds, isn’t it? But we must all make sacrifices. Gerald and I will be moving down to the London house for the duration of the war – unless it’s already been taken over by Belgian refugees,’ she added with her tinkling laugh.

  At last all the gauze strips were rolled and they were able to leave. As they had their pony and trap, Mrs Dauntry offered a lift into the village. ‘It’s on our way,’ Sylvia said gaily and although Edith accepted after a momentary hesitation, Rose didn’t think she could bear their company a moment longer.

  ‘It’s very kind of you,’ she said as she pulled on her gloves, ‘but I have a headache. I think some fresh air will do me good.’

  Feeling sorry for her mother but glad to be alone, she watched the trap bowling down the avenue and then turned to walk back around the house onto the terrace. Rose had heard that in happier days, when Ralph’s mother was alive, there had been wonderful parties on the terrace on languid summer evenings and she liked to imagine that she could still hear the chatter and the laughter drifting in the air.

  She walked along the gravel paths past the herbaceous borders, all looking badly in need of some attention, and through the gate in the wall to the orchard. As children, she and John had had the run of the hall grounds and the orchard had been a favourite place to play.

  One day they had come across Ralph there. Three years older than John, Ralph must have been about sixteen at the time, and Rose, at ten, had been too overawed by his magnificence to say a word. But she remembered that Ralph had been friendly to John and had even showed him the best way to climb a gnarled apple tree in the centre of the orchard.

  Why, oh why, did everything come back to Ralph? Rose kicked a rotting apple away. She must pull herself together. It was pointless thinking about him and wasting her life wishing things had been different. They weren’t and she just had to accept it.

  If only Papa would let her do something useful, she thought with a sigh, she would have something else to occupy her mind.

  Until then, it looked as if she would be stuck with rolling bandages and nursing her own bruised heart.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Restlessly, Rose wandered around the orchard, seeing if she could remember which tree the boys had climbed. That one, she was almost sure, she decided and reached up to pull off an apple. Her tug set off a cascade of apples bouncing down onto her hat. ‘Ow,’ she said and instinctively put up a hand to protect her head, only to feel another apple drop onto her and then another.

  Puzzled, she looked up and her heart lurched into her throat. A man was hidden in the branches above her and a yelp of fright escaped her. ‘What … what are you doing up there?’

  ‘Ah now, I’m sorry if they hurt you,’ he said in the warm lilt of the Irish, apparently unconcerned at being spotted. Now that she looked more closely she could see that he was desperately trying to control a bag of apples, some of which had clearly toppled out of the top and onto her head. ‘They slipped out before I could stop them. That’s the trouble with apples,’ he said. ‘They’re slippery things.’

  Rose drew herself up. ‘I said, what are you doing up there?’ she repeated. She had been startled at the sight of him, but he didn’t appear to be dangerous, in spite of everything Mrs Dauntry had had to say about ‘goings-on’.

  ‘I was just helping myself to some apples,’ he said with disarming frankness. ‘Hold these now, will you?’ Without waiting for Rose to agree, he lowered a kitbag stuffed full of apples, and somehow she found herself holding it while he climbed down the branches until he could jump onto the ground.

  ‘Thank you, a chara,’ he said, taking the bag back from her with a smile that creased his cheeks in a way Rose strongly suspected he knew was charming.

  ‘Have you been stealing?’ she said in what she hoped was a quelling voice.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘are they your apples?’

  ‘No, but …’

  ‘Aha, so you’re stealing too?’

  Rose had forgotten the apple s
he still held in her hand. ‘Yes … no … it’s quite different!’ she said, flustered, and dropped it into the grass. ‘I know the Verneys!’

  ‘There you have the advantage of me,’ he conceded. ‘Do the Verneys send their guests out to amuse themselves in the orchard?’

  ‘I’ve been rolling bandages.’ Rose tried for some dignity. ‘I’m just on my way home.’

  ‘Rolling bandages, eh? For the war effort?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘You could say I’m supporting the war effort too,’ he said. ‘The men are all desperate for a decent meal or at least a piece of fruit. And it’s not like the Verneys don’t have plenty to spare,’ he added, glancing around the orchard where there were indeed apples rotting on the ground.

  ‘You should have asked.’ Rose hated how priggish she sounded and when he raised his brows, a stupid blush stained her cheeks.

  ‘Ah, sure,’ he said, amused. ‘Next time I’ll stroll up to the front door and ask if I can help myself to some apples, shall I?’

  Rose looked away. She knew as well as he did what kind of response he would get.

  He hoisted the kit bag onto his shoulder. ‘So, Rose, are you going to report me to the constable?’

  ‘No, I—’ She broke off to stare at him. ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘I had the pleasure of being lectured by your papa outside the Woolpack once.’

  No wonder he had seemed vaguely familiar! ‘You were fighting,’ she remembered and he held up his hands.

  ‘I didn’t start it, I swear.’

  ‘And you winked at me.’ It was coming back now.

  ‘I am guilty of that, yes. Is winking not allowed in Beckindale?’

  ‘You don’t wink at people you don’t know.’ What was it about him that made her sound so stuffy?

  ‘Well, that’s easily remedied,’ he said. ‘Corporal Michael Dingle at your service.’ He held out his hand and Rose couldn’t think of a good reason not to take it. ‘Mick to my friends.’ She could feel the warmth of his palm through her glove and she had to resist the urge to snatch her hand away.

  ‘I am Miss Haywood,’ she said with a haughty look.

  He cocked his head on one side while he thought about it. ‘I prefer Rose,’ he said.

  Rose was feeling ruffled, and she didn’t like it. She was quite sure that she shouldn’t be chatting to a man who her father would certainly deem unsuitable, if not just as unsavoury as Mrs Dauntry had warned. He had openly admitted stealing, but she could hardly march him off to the constable, and besides, hadn’t she defended him and his like earlier?

  ‘I suppose Lord Miffield can spare you an apple or two,’ she said after a moment. ‘I won’t say anything to the police or to Lady Miffield, but I will if I see you here again. Is that clear?’

  ‘As crystal,’ he agreed, with another wink. ‘Well, I’d better be getting on.’ He adjusted the kit bag on his shoulder. ‘I’ll be seeing you, Rose.’

  ‘I hope not,’ she said to put him in his place, ‘and it’s Miss Haywood to you, Corporal Dingle.’

  She wanted him to feel embarrassed but he just laughed, vaulted over the orchard wall and was gone.

  Levi whistled as he walked down the track towards Beckindale. This area with its hills and bleak moors was nothing like green and gentle Ballybeg, but he felt more at home here than he did in noisy Bradford, and on this crisp autumn day with the Yorkshire sky a pale blue and the smoke curling up from the chimneys in the village below, he felt his spirits rising.

  He had the afternoon off, and for once he was glad to be alone. Nat was writing to Molly again while Mick had disappeared with a wink, no doubt to set up some deal. Levi loved his brother, but he didn’t want him around in case he happened to bump into the vicar’s daughter.

  Rose. Levi hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since that afternoon when he had been sprawled on the cobbles outside the Woolpack and had looked up to see her. Her image had helped him through the daily humiliations of training, helped him grit his teeth and hold out for his next afternoon off.

  And now it had come and he was on his way into Beckindale and in a few minutes he might see her again. Levi couldn’t imagine that he would have the nerve to speak to her. He just wanted to know if she was as pretty as he remembered.

  Mick would know what to say, but Levi didn’t want him there. Rose was his dream. If they met her, Mick would take over and make her smile and he, Levi, would be left on the sidelines as usual. It wasn’t as if Mick would care whether Rose responded or not. For him, flirting was just an automatic reaction to any pretty female. He wouldn’t feel about Rose the way Levi did.

  Seeing Rose, so pure and so pretty after the dirt and discomfort of the training camp, had changed everything for him. Levi couldn’t really explain it to himself, but he held her image inside him like a precious memory.

  He had been feeling so homesick until he had seen her. He’d been sick of his brothers fussing and fretting over him, sick of struggling to do the drills they accomplished easily. But mostly sick of the army.

  The routine was punishing. Up at half past three in the morning for two hours of drilling and a three-mile march before breakfast. The day was an endless round of drilling, drilling and more drilling on a sticky, muddy parade ground. At least the last couple of weeks there had been some respite from that, Levi thought, though the longer route marches left him with agonising blisters and he had struggled with learning how to use a bayonet.

  The sergeant-major had been scathing about Levi’s attempt to stick his bayonet into the straw-filled sacks that were hung at intervals across the field. They had to rush towards one, jab the bayonet in the approximate position of a stomach, wrench it free and then rush on to the next.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing, Paddy? Giving Fritz a tickle on his tummy?’

  The hot summer had given way to a miserably wet autumn and the camp was awash with mud which made it almost impossible to stick to the standards of cleanliness the army set such store by. Levi’s nemesis, Sergeant-Major Hobbs, inspected the ranks with an eagle eye. A speck of dust on a boot or a single button less brightly polished than the next might be punished with two hours of extra drilling at the end of the day or an order to clean out the urinal tubs.

  Levi might have grown up in a poor village in Ireland, but he had always been coddled by his mother because of his illness and the harsh reality of camp life had been a shock. They slept in wooden huts, the roofs made of little more than brown paper that leaked like a sieve when it was raining, which seemed to be all the time. There was no heating, just the stink and fug of thirty men to a hut. The food was disgusting too, watery stew or bully beef sandwiches made with stale, soggy bread.

  Almost all the other men came from Bradford. They were a tough bunch, close knit and so coarsely spoken that Levi had been shocked, but they accepted Mick very quickly. Levi knew that he was lucky and that without him he would have been mercilessly bullied, but it stung that he had to rely on his brothers still.

  Levi had been cursing his decision to join up. He couldn’t admit how much hated it, not after having taken such a stand over enlisting in the first place. If he hadn’t done that, Nat wouldn’t have enlisted either, and Levi felt guilty about that too. Nat was a peaceable soul and with Molly expecting their first child, he hadn’t wanted to fight.

  But now that Levi had seen Rose, it all felt different. If he hadn’t enlisted, he would never have seen her.

  He was smiling as he crossed the bridge and headed into Beckindale. He wandered up to the church first. Rose’s father was a vicar so it stood to reason she would live nearby. The church looked fairly new. Levi thought about going in to have a look, but the memory of his mother and what she would think of him in a Protestant church made him turn away – and almost bump into the vicar.

  Rose’s father.

  Levi snatched off his cap and ducked his head. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he mumbled.

  The vicar frowned. ‘What are y
ou doing here, boy?’

  ‘I was just … looking at the church.’

  ‘You’re Irish,’ barked the vicar. ‘Catholic?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then this isn’t the place for you. If you wanted to come in and worship, then of course that would be a different matter, but there has been too much loitering by you men since the training camp was set up. It’s causing bad feeling in the village. Get along now, and don’t come back unless you’ve got a good reason to be here.’

  ‘Yes, sir. No, sir.’

  Cramming his cap back on his head, Levi walked back down the lane. He didn’t dare look back in case the vicar was watching him, so he turned into the main street. A hammering came from the clog maker’s shop, the smell of leather drifted out from the saddlery. He passed a butcher, a greengrocer and a sweetshop that reminded him achingly of Ballybeg and being allowed to spend a halfpenny on aniseed balls. There was a general store, too, which when Levi pressed his nose against the window seemed to sell everything from tea and biscuits to paraffin and candles as well as the bags of cattle feed and coal that were propped up outside.

  Most shopping would have been done in the morning and there were few people about. Those that passed Levi gave his uniform a wary look and he began to feel uncomfortably conspicuous until he caught sight of Rose herself and his heart leapt.

  There was no mistaking that trim figure and the glimpse of golden hair beneath her hat! She was turning into the post office, a letter in her hand.

  Levi’s agitation vanished. Crossing the street, he hurried along to the post office and without giving himself time to think, pushed open the door and went in after her. And there she was, standing at the counter, her back to him. The postmistress was all smiles as she weighed the letter.