The Clockmaker's Wife

by Daisy Wood

  Frank was installed in his usual chair by the fire, reading a newspaper. ‘Have a seat,’ he said, indicating a chair as though Nell were coming for an interview. ‘Good journey?’

  ‘Not too bad.’ She took off her hat and leaned back, suddenly weary. ‘I met some Land Girls on the train.’

  ‘Land Girls!’ Her father snorted. ‘They’re all over the place these days, leaving gates open and generally causing havoc. I pity the poor farmers, having to keep that lot under control.’

  Nell hadn’t the energy to defend Dot and Marjorie, so she merely said, ‘How are you keeping? Still busy with the Home Guard?’

  ‘Absolutely. Lord Winthrop and I are whipping the men into shape.’ Frank gave her his usual look whenever that name was mentioned: a blend of hostility and reproach. ‘At least there are two of us who’ve seen active service. You can’t beat experience.’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Nell stood. ‘Well, I’d better go and settle in.’

  ‘We’ve put you in your old room,’ her father said. ‘Is your luggage coming separately?’

  ‘There isn’t any luggage,’ Nell replied. ‘Only some baby clothes my neighbour gave us. We’ve lost everything, pretty much.’

  Her father shook his head. ‘You should have left London a long time ago. I can’t imagine what your husband was thinking.’

  ‘It’s not Arthur’s fault. He’s been telling me to take Alice away for weeks, but I didn’t want to go.’ Nell had to blink away the shameful tears from her eyes.

  ‘There, there.’ Frank smiled at her indulgently. ‘Don’t upset yourself. You have to understand, Nella, I’ve handed my most precious possession to Arthur for safekeeping. It pains me to think he isn’t taking proper care of you. Still, at least you’re here now.’ He shook his head. ‘But when I think of what you—’

  Nell heard the gong in the hall being struck just then, thank goodness. ‘Tea’s ready, better dash,’ she said, making for the door. Her father wouldn’t be joining them: he preferred to eat separately if children were present at the table.

  Frank hadn’t quite finished with her, though. ‘You could have had a very different life, you know,’ he said, looking at her over the top of his spectacles. ‘I hope you’re happy with the choice you made.’

  Nell chose not to reply. And so it begins, she thought, closing the door behind her.

  There were boiled eggs for tea, and bread spread thickly with yellow butter instead of a scrape of margarine.

  ‘Don’t think we have shell eggs every day,’ Rose said. ‘This is a special occasion.’

  The evacuees were already sitting at the table by the time Nell took her place. Four of them came from the same family, the Potts: Susan, a stolid girl of thirteen; Brenda, aged ten with flaming ginger hair; and the twins, Timothy and Janet, who were eight. The gang was completed by Malcolm Parsons, a tiny, miserable boy of six, whose eyes swam behind thick-lensed glasses.

  ‘You should have seen the Potts brood when they first arrived,’ Rose told Nell when the meal was over and they were having a cup of tea together in the kitchen. ‘They couldn’t have had a bath for weeks, and they all had nits. And as for their clothes! Filthy dirty, full of holes, and Susan’s shoes two sizes too small. The poor girl could hardly walk. She’ll be a martyr to bunions when she’s older.’

  The evacuees had cleared the table and were currently doing the washing-up in the scullery under Brenda’s direction, apart from her older sister Susan, who had loaded Alice back into the pram and was pushing her up and down the hall. She was the motherly type, Rose said approvingly.

  ‘So tell me about Harry,’ Nell said. ‘Do you know where he’s being held?’

  Her mother took a crumpled postcard out of her apron pocket. ‘Am safe, a prisoner of war in Germany,’ Harry had written. ‘Do not worry. My address will follow shortly and then you can write to me. Love to all.’

  ‘Good news, isn’t it?’ Rose’s face had lit up. ‘I always thought he’d come through, though one never likes to say so. We’ll be able to send him packages through the Red Cross. I’m busy knitting socks.’

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ Nell agreed. Her brother was tough and resilient: if anyone could survive, it would be him. The two of them were only eighteen months apart and had been close throughout their childhood, and beyond. As soon as Harry had learned to ride a bicycle or swim in the lake, she’d wanted to follow him, and he was prepared to teach her. Their parents thought girls shouldn’t climb trees or play football but luckily for her, Harry didn’t agree. They’d spent hours together outdoors in the holidays and during long summer evenings. Sometimes she was left out when a gang of boys tore off on their bikes – Harry wasn’t a saint – but he would usually make it up to her later. When they were younger, they’d build go-karts and make dens; later he’d taught her how to shoot rabbits with an air rifle, and skin and gut them ready for the pot. They would practise shooting tin cans off tree stumps and at fifteen she became a better shot than he was. ‘Whatever have you been up to?’ their mother would complain, looking at the state of Nell’s shorts (she was allowed to wear them for running about in the woods). ‘People in the village are making remarks.’

  Nell took a surreptitious glance at her mother across the table. Rose’s hair was drooping out of its curl and her cheeks were flushed. ‘I hope it won’t be too much for you, Ma,’ she said, patting Rose’s hand. ‘Taking care of us as well as the evacuees.’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll pull your weight,’ her mother replied. ‘Anyway, it’s lovely to have the house full. Reminds me of when you and Harry were little. Those were the happiest days of my life, you know.’

  ‘Pa seems on good form,’ Nell said carefully. ‘How’s he been?’

  ‘Oh, he’s in fine fettle. Parading about in the Home Guard with Lord Winthrop – what more could he ask?’ They exchanged knowing smiles. ‘Daft, isn’t it? Three rifles between the lot of them and if one goes off, he’ll fall down in a faint. Still, it keeps him busy so I’m not complaining.’

  Her father’s moods had been a constant preoccupation for as long as Nell could remember. Frank Roberts had gone away to fight in 1915 and come back a changed man. He’d been an assistant bank manager before the war and tipped for promotion, but being wounded at the battle of the Somme brought his career to an abrupt end. Apart from his physical injuries, which were never spelt out, his nerves had gone. He still suffered from headaches and bad dreams, and would sometimes wake the household up at night with his shouting. Their father had seen terrible things in France, Rose had told the children when they were (almost) old enough to understand, and he couldn’t get those pictures out of his head. That’s what made him angry sometimes. It wasn’t their fault but it wasn’t necessarily his, either. Nell felt as though she hardly knew her father, although he was always around the house: sitting in his chair by the fire, reading a newspaper at the kitchen table, cleaning his shoes in the scullery. She’d learned early on that it was wisest to keep out of his way and the habit had persisted.

  They had tolerated each other well enough until Nell had been unfortunate enough to catch the eye of Lord Winthrop’s only son, Hugo. The Winthrops lived in Millbury Manor, a couple of fields away, and were the nearest thing the village had to a squire and his lady. Lord Winthrop had served with distinction in the Royal Engineers during the Great War and gone on to make a fortune in the automobile industry – much of which, it was rumoured, he’d given to the Conservative party. At any rate, he’d been rewarded with a title and a seat in the House of Lords. He was a moody man, often to be seen stomping along the lanes, swiping at nettles in the verge with his shooting stick. He was keen on flying and kept a private plane at Hatfield aerodrome, but cars were his passion: he had a fleet of five or six in the garage, and a manservant called – rather confusingly – Cooke, to drive him. Nell lived in hope the Winthrops would employ a cook called Driver, but life was rarely so perfect. It was Cooke who dressed up as Father Christmas at the Winthrops’ annual party and handed
out presents to the overexcited children. Lord Winthrop would have been better suited to the role, with his thick white hair and ruddy complexion, if only he could have been persuaded to smile.

  The Winthrops also opened their garden for the church fête each summer, which was when Hugo Winthrop, just down from Cambridge for the Long Vacation, had noticed Nell. He’d struck up a conversation that quickly revealed his arrogance, and a condescending streak she couldn’t abide. From that day on, he wouldn’t leave her alone: was always bumping into her whenever she walked into the village or singling her out after church.

  Frank was delighted. ‘What a match,’ Nell overheard him say to Rose one evening. ‘She could end up Lady of the Manor. Our little Nella!’

  ‘But I can’t bear Hugo,’ Nell told her mother as soon as she got the chance. ‘He makes my flesh creep. He doesn’t want to marry me, anyway; he’s got other things on his mind.’

  Rose’s lips had set in a thin line. ‘Don’t worry,’ she’d said. ‘No one’s going to make you do anything against your will. Leave your father to me.’

  For days, the house had simmered with tension. Frank went about glowering and slamming doors, while Rose watched him with nervous eyes, jumping at every sound. Nell would lie awake, listening to them argue long into the night. She knew the effort it took for Rose to stand up to her husband.

  Things came to a head when Hugo waylaid Nell up on the hills one afternoon, as she was walking the neighbour’s dog, and kissed her, pressing his bristly moustache against her lips and forcing his tongue into her mouth. It had taken all of her strength to push him off. He had looked at her with cold eyes, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, and called her a provoking little bitch. When he came for her again, she was ready. She’d wrapped the dog lead around her fist and hit him hard: an uppercut to the jaw that sent him sprawling back on the grass, stunned. Harry would have been proud. And then she walked to Millbury Manor, asked to see Lord Winthrop and told him what had happened.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ he’d said, but she knew from his expression that he did, and that she would have no more trouble from Hugo.

  That evening, Lord Winthrop had telephoned her father. She had no idea what was said, but Frank locked himself away in his study after the conversation and refused to speak to anyone for days. That was when Nell decided that she would train as a teacher in London, rather than at the local college, and live in digs there. She’d had enough; the atmosphere at home was intolerable.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right?’ she’d asked her mother, the night before she left.

  ‘Don’t you worry about me,’ Rose had said, hugging her. ‘I’ve made my bed and it’s not such a hard one, really. I can manage him better on my own. You look out for yourself.’

  So Nell had looked out for herself, and found Arthur. She’d kept him a secret at first, but after he’d proposed, introducing him to her family was unavoidable. Her parents came up from Oxfordshire on the train and the four of them had had tea together in a grand hotel near Paddington Station. The conversation had been flowing reasonably smoothly until Arthur had mentioned that his parents were German, and he’d grown up speaking that language at home. One would never have guessed, Rose had complimented him, after a short, stunned silence; he hadn’t the trace of an accent.

  ‘But I was born here,’ he’d reassured her. ‘I love everything English as much as you do – probably more! Afternoon tea,’ he indicated the cucumber sandwiches, the plate of scones and little pots of jam and cream, ‘and thatched cottages, and our marvellous Royal Family.’ Who were half German anyway, Nell thought. ‘And Charles Dickens,’ Arthur had added desperately, looking to her for support. ‘Little Nell! From The Old Curiosity Shop, as of course you know.’

  Little Nell was his pet name for her – although with her shoes on, she was only an inch shorter than he was. He was trying so hard, and she loved him for making such an effort to please. The atmosphere changed from that moment on, however. Her father became silent, leaving Rose to chatter nervously. When Nell was saying goodbye to her parents at the station, Arthur having already left, Frank had stepped away from her and said over his shoulder in a cold, flat voice, ‘A blasted German! Eleanor, how could you?’ And her mother had simply looked from one to the other of them with that cowed, anxious expression on her face.

  Both sets of parents came to their wedding – a rushed affair in the town hall, hastily arranged because of the looming war – but her father wouldn’t shake Arthur’s hand and pretended not to understand a word Mr Spelman said. Harry would have cheered up the proceedings, but he was away training with the British Expeditionary Force by then and wasn’t given leave to attend, so Nell had to make do with a distant cousin and two friends from teacher-training college to oil the social wheels. They had cake and sandwiches in an ante room upstairs, along with the half dozen bottles of champagne Mr and Mrs Spelman had brought to the reception.

  ‘Ostentatious,’ her father had remarked later, although he’d condescended to drink three glasses.

  Nell had liked Arthur’s father, Henry (or Heinrich, as Arthur’s mother, Frieda, called him), straight away. He was a short, bald man with a ready smile and polished old-world manners. He had kissed Nell’s hand and congratulated his son on marrying the most beautiful girl in England so charmingly that she almost believed him. He spoke English with a heavy German accent, admittedly, but his warmth and humour shone through. Eventually he and Frieda gave up the effort to make conversation and talked quietly to each other, or to Arthur. Nell was ashamed of her father, who took no interest in his new son-in-law and couldn’t even pretend to look happy on his daughter’s wedding day.

  She had apologised to Arthur later. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘My parents are used to it. Every window of my father’s shop was smashed after the Lusitania was sunk in the last war. The sound of breaking glass is one of my earliest memories.’

  Up in the loft room, the evacuees were meant to be settling down for the night. Nell could hear the odd thump, and then a scraping sound as something heavy was dragged across the floor. She hoped it wasn’t Malcolm Parsons. Alice cried briefly a few times in the makeshift cot Rose had devised for her – a blanket box lined with an eiderdown – but without much conviction. The sound of Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra drifted upstairs from the gramophone player in the sitting room.

  Nell had begun composing a letter to Arthur in her head – ‘quite a journey but we’re settling down now, Mother’s so pleased to see us and the evacuees are certainly good value’ – when a sudden thought sent her sitting bolt upright. Swinging down her legs, she went over to the fireplace and kicked aside the rug in front of it, running her fingers over the floorboard beneath. She had forgotten how smoothly the plank fitted and initially wasn’t sure how she would lever it up, but eventually she managed with the help of a metal-handled comb from her dressing table. Alice turned over, coughed, then settled back into sleep. Nell reached down into the cavity between the floor joists and felt around for the gun she had hidden there, wrapped in a canvas haversack: the pistol Harry had given her.

  They had both come home for the weekend to say goodbye before he left for training camp and the two of them had gone for a walk together. The woods had looked spectacular that morning, the spring sunshine slanting through a canopy of acid-green leaves to fall on a sea of bluebells, stretching away to the horizon. The light was so clear, the colours almost painfully intense. She wondered whether such beauty had made it harder for Harry to leave, and whether the memory was a consolation or torture to him now.

  ‘I’ve been issued with a service revolver,’ he’d said, handing her the haversack, ‘so I want you to have my old Beretta. We might not win this war, Nella. The top brass can say what they like but we’re not prepared for what’s coming.’ His eyes had been serious. ‘Things could get nasty. If the Germans invade, I should like to think of you having options.’

  Nell had left the pistol behind at Orchard House when sh
e went back to London. War hadn’t seemed inevitable then, let alone an enemy invasion, and although she and Arthur weren’t yet engaged, he might have found the gun by chance and wondered why she should have had it. Holding the Beretta now made her feel calm and powerful for the first time in a while. She checked the magazine – seven cartridges, which should provide enough options for her immediate family, should the worst come to the worst, with a few shots left over – put the pistol back in its bag and stowed it under the floorboard once more.

  Chapter Nine

  Oxfordshire, November/December 1940

  Nell loaded her father’s breakfast things onto a tray and walked into the hall, where she found Susan Potts fussing over Alice in the pram and Brenda Potts sitting on the stairs, her bright hair glowing like a beacon in the gloom. Brenda followed Nell through to the kitchen, watching her closely.

  ‘What is it?’ Nell said, when she couldn’t bear the scrutiny any longer.

  ‘Is your husband really a spy?’ Brenda asked.

  ‘Of course not. Why would you think that?’

  Brenda narrowed her eyes craftily. ‘Because I heard you and your mum talking about it this morning. About him being German and that.’

  Nell put the tray down on the kitchen table. ‘My husband isn’t German. He was born in London, and he’s as English as you or me.’ More or less.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone about Arthur’s parents,’ Rose had said to her. ‘If by any chance it should come up. You know what people are like in this village for gossip.’

  ‘You shouldn’t eavesdrop,’ Nell told Brenda. ‘You know what they say: listeners never hear any good of themselves.’

  ‘I did once,’ Brenda remarked nonchalantly. ‘I heard my teacher say I was grammar-school material. She’s thinking of putting me in for the scholarship exam.’

  ‘Bully for you,’ Nell said. Brenda didn’t seem to care; she was evidently a tough nut. Nell put the crockery into the washing-up bowl and turned on the tap.