Alfred and Emily (3 page)

And now Emily and Alfred were at the top of their lives, their fortunes – of everything.

‘If only we could live our good years all over again,' my mother would say, fiercely gathering those years into her arms and holding them safe, her eyes challenging her husband as if he were responsible for their end.

‘Yes,' he would say. ‘What good times they were. Oh, what jolly times we did have.'

Alfred, on the Redway farm, was where, really, he had been all his life. From a tiny boy he had played with the farmers' sons and over the farms. The ditches, the hedgerows, the fields were his playground, and Bert had been his special friend, as he was now. The two young men were at work, supervising the hired men, or on their own until the light went every night, when Albert went with Bert to the pub – certainly a chief responsibility – and then home with him to supper. He lived in the Redways' house, like a son. Alfred liked to look after the beasts; Bert supervised the crops. All summer weekends Alfred was playing cricket, and he competed in billiards and
snooker matches. Bert liked going to the races, and Alfred tried to go with him, if there was time, for the big, ruddy, good-natured man with his black curls and loud laugh was known for his affability and, too, his tendency to get much drunker than an occasion needed. Alfred often took the tankards out of Bert's hands and got him home before too late. He knew that Bert's parents relied on him for this.

He loved to dance, too, and if there was a dance big or small anywhere around on a Saturday, he might walk to it, several miles, and walk back, through the early morning.

Alfred's life was, then, hard work and hard play, but because of Mrs. Lane, who belonged to a travelling library, he read a good bit. Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Barrie – he discussed them with Mrs. Lane, and with Mr. Lane, who liked politics too. ‘I am a true blue Tory,' Mr. Lane announced, partly to tease his wife, who had socialist and pacifist leanings. Alfred visited the Lanes when he could for the sake of some debate and to borrow books and magazines.

He went up to London for the music hall, which he loved, and for plays. He might drop in on ‘the girls', as Mrs. Lane called them. ‘Do go see the girls, Alfred, and come and tell me how they are.'

The ‘flat' they lived in – called that because it was modish, not to say quite daring, still, for girls to live in a flat and keep themselves – was really two rooms at the back of a workman's house near the hospital.

‘I did like going to have supper after the show,' he would reminisce, years, decades, later. ‘Oh, it was such fun, at the
Trocadero, at the Café Royal.' But then there was the problem of catching the last train back to Colchester. More than once he dossed down on the floor of the girls' living-room, but the woman of the house, Mrs. Bruce, said she did not like a young man sleeping in unmarried girls' rooms.

‘But, Mrs. Bruce, I've known them all my life,' said Alfred; ‘they might be my sisters.'

‘But they aren't your sisters, as far as I can see,' said Mrs. Bruce, lips thin, arms held tight over a bossy bosom. ‘I simply don't like it.' And she would wait till he came in, the girls being there or not, and open the door suddenly, without knocking…

‘Mrs. Grundy,' apostrophized my father, years and decades later. ‘Mrs. Grundy', an exemplary moral lady, is to be found in novels and memoirs of the time. Who was she? ‘Mrs. Bruce was like my mother,' said Alfred, even as an old man – well, as old as he got. ‘Never say a nice thing if you can say a nasty one. Mrs. Grundy sees dirt and filth where anyone else sees a nice clean floor.'

Alfred did see Emily on his London visits, but not often. Daisy was more often in than Emily, and she would apologize.

‘You know Emily,' she would say, ‘she's such a goer. Often I hardly see her myself for days. She blows in and blows out. Well, rather like you do.' For Daisy would have been happy if Alfred came more often and stayed longer.

If Emily was a ‘goer' then was not he?

‘If only I had Emily's energy,' Daisy would mourn. ‘Where does she get it from?'

‘For goodness' sake,' Mrs. Lane might say, ‘sit down a minute, Alfred. Have a cup of tea. Look, here's some of my cake that you like.'

‘The pigs need moving…I've got a cow due to calve, and it's time to get the beet in off the top field,' Alfred might say, while she put her two hands on his shoulders and pushed him into a chair.

‘I never see you enough, Alfred. And Daisy doesn't seem to have time these days. As for Emily – perhaps she'll come for the big day next month.'

And perhaps not.

‘How did we do it?' my father might demand of my mother, looking back at his youthful self. ‘Good God, when I think…'

‘God knows,' says my mother, sighing. ‘I was never tired in those days.'

Emily, Sister McVeagh at the Royal Free, loved her work.

‘A bit of a martinet, but she was always fair.' This was Daisy, who was working her way along a different itinerary.

Emily played tennis with schoolfriends to whom she was writing in her old age: ‘Do you remember…'

She worked hard at her piano and took her finals in that time. The examiners told her she could have a career as a concert pianist if she wanted. She played the organ for services at All Souls, a fashionable church in Langham Place. She played concerts, recitals, and for social events at the hospital, even for nurses' dances. A good sport, was Sister Emily McVeagh.

During those years a message came from her stepmother
that she thought her father would like to see her.

Not from her father himself, though.

Emily went to lunch at her old home. Perhaps she went more than once.

‘But I never forgave him, never, never,' she would insist, eyes flashing, her hands in fists.

What would ‘forgiving' him have meant, from a daughter who had disobeyed him, was independent, doing very well, surely an ornament to him, the family – everyone?

‘Father, thank you, I owe you so much.' Yes?

Well she certainly did owe him a lot.

‘Without you I never would have…'

Possibly true.

But she couldn't forget those early years as a nurse. ‘It was so hard, it was so difficult' – and she was not talking about the sheer hard labour of the beginning nurse's life.

‘I was so hungry. We all were. I couldn't even afford to buy a decent pocket handkerchief,' she appealed, tears in her eyes. ‘The pay was so bad. I couldn't even buy a pair of gloves,' said my mother, to a girl who was usually out in the bush somewhere, dusty bare legs in
veldschoen
, in a frock run up from a reduced dress length from the store, with scratched hands, because the sitting hen didn't like being handled, or I had been climbing over a barbed-wire fence.
Gloves!

‘I couldn't buy some nice gloves. Even a tiny bit of an allowance…a little pocket money.'

When my mother went into Banket on mail days, she wore a proper hat, its ribbon always kept new and smart, white
gloves that had little buttons, and her shoes were polished. In her handbag was a fresh white linen handkerchief. Her dress would be the ‘tailored' dress that all the women of the district wore for special occasions. She could have walked down the main street of any big city.

But would she have taken an allowance from her father? I think not.

Emily didn't like dancing much, concerts and the theatre were what she liked, but Daisy asked Alfred up to a Christmas dance for the senior nurses, and there he danced all evening with one Betsy Somers. She was a small, plump girl with fair hair in curls and little ringlets, and cheeks that mottled easily when it was hot. Knowing people pointed out to each other that Betsy was very similar to Mrs. Lane.

Getting married – now that was a big step, surely?

Mr. Redway was a kind man and Alfred earned a good bit more than a labourer, but it wasn't enough to marry on. And he could hardly ask Betsy to live in the Redways' house.

That Alfred was going up to London as often as he could to see a nurse became known, and Mr. Redway said to Alfred that he would accompany him to the top field to look at the new cowshed.

Alfred wondered what was coming: probably Bert's drinking.

The Redways' house had once been the manager's house for a large estate that had done badly and was divided and sold. As well as the Redways' house there were a lot of cottages, of various kinds and sizes, which had in them the labourers and
their families. To the side of the top field was a little wood, where Mr. Redway stood with Alfred and said he planned to build a fair-sized house just there. ‘Of course,' said Mr. Redway, ‘Bert could live in it, but I'd rather he was at home.' Alfred understood. His conversations with Mr. Redway were like this: most things left unsaid. Bert was a fair old trouble, these days, and Alfred could not be expected to live with him and look after him. ‘If you want to get wed,' said Mr. Redway, ‘you can have the house, and I'll see you right.' Here, what could have been said was something on the lines of, ‘I wish you were our son, Alfred. I could leave the farm to you, without a moment's worry about it. But you aren't, and so we must make the best of it. If Bert were thinking of getting married, then…but he doesn't seem to have plans.' Aloud: ‘Betsy Somers, hey? Isn't that a Kentish family? Why don't you bring her down for the weekend? Perhaps for our annual do. Does Betsy like cricket?'

‘I hope so,' said Alfred, laughing. ‘She's going to have a bad time of it if she doesn't.'

That was how Alfred's future was decided. And Alfred liked to think of Betsy sitting in a chair beside Mrs. Lane, watching him play.

And what had not been said aloud? ‘You must see we want to look her over. Is she going to fit in with us?' And so it goes always with a well-settled community when a son is bringing in a bride.
Will she become one of us?

‘Are you going to want thatch or slates for the roof?' said Mr. Redway.

‘Slates,' said Alfred. ‘Better for fire.'

He would ask Betsy to marry him, when the house was done, but there was no hurry. He thought he probably loved her, but his life as a bachelor was really so very pleasant. And then Fate took a decided turn. He was up in London, and actually in the girls' flat, having supper, when a pain in his side felled him groaning to the floor. They were walking distance from the Royal Free. Daisy ran to the hospital and brought porters and a stretcher while Emily was taking Alfred to the front door. Off he was whisked to an operating theatre, just in time to save his life. His appendix had burst. He was in hospital long enough for him to decide that, yes, he really did love Betsy. They were engaged to marry. Meanwhile, Emily McVeagh announced her engagement to Dr. Martin-White from Cardiology. There was a small party, in the office of Sister McVeagh's ward. Alfred was there, on crutches, in a corner, watching, with Daisy. Betsy was on duty somewhere.

‘He looks a really nice chap,' approved Alfred to Daisy.

Dr. Martin-White was very different from the people Alfred was surrounded by most days, all farmers, labourers, country people. He was tallish, perhaps too thin, with a hesitant manner, as if he felt he presumed, with a thoughtful, sensitive face.

This happened in 1916.

In life, my father's appendix burst just before the battle of the Somme, saving him from being killed with the rest of his company. He was sent back to the trenches where shrapnel in his right leg saved him from the battle of Passchendaele. ‘A pretty lucky thing,' he might say. But, later, ‘That is, if you set so much store on being alive.'

Now things moved fast. Betsy said she would not mind missing the last year of her training, if that meant she could marry her Alfred now. Alfred, who had imagined getting married at a quite comfortable time ahead, heard Betsy say she could not bear to be separated from him, and found himself agreeing with her. ‘Why wait?' she said, and then so did he. But where were they going to live? Their house was nowhere near being finished. So, after all, that meant they would start married life in the Redways' house. And meant, too, that the looking-over of Betsy could not be postponed. ‘Of course they have to give me a good looking-over,' she said, confident that this would go well: Betsy knew people liked her, so why not the Redways? But Alfred was more concerned that Mrs. Lane should meet her, and at once. If Mrs. Lane did not approve, then…Would he be prepared to give up Betsy? The question did actually present itself to Alfred, and forcefully. No, he wouldn't. And that was how Alfred learned that Betsy was indeed essential to him.

No one need have worried. Mrs. Lane, expecting her favourite Alfred's chosen, stood by her window, waiting. At the gate stood a plump fair girl ‘all of a tremble', as Mrs. Lane described it to Alfred. Mrs. Lane ran down to the gate and embraced Betsy. ‘Oh, welcome, dear Betsy,' crooned Alfred's other mother. (‘She's been more a mother to me than my own ever was.')

The women wept in each other's arms and Mrs. Lane told Alfred he was a lucky man. ‘She's lovely, Alfred. Oh, well done.'

At the Redways, at once a difficulty. Bert came in from the pub because Alfred's fiancée was coming to supper, and he took to her at once, but showed it by teasing and needling, sometimes not very pleasantly, because he was half tight.

She stood up to him well, while her soon-to-be ‘father-in-law and mother-in-law' watched silently, and gave her good marks.

Bert said to Alfred that he was a lucky dog.

And when the Allied Bank's annual beanfeast came around again, Betsy was sitting beside Mrs. Lane under the oak tree, applauding when Mrs. Lane indicated she should. There was a pretty good crowd that afternoon, because Alfred Tayler was there, and for the first time Betsy saw her Alfred in his element.

There were two celebrations for Alfred and Betsy's marriage, one a real wedding in Kent, where Alfred was surprised to find he was part of a large and amiable family. He would always like other people's families better than his own. Emily did not go – she was busy with her new home. Daisy went, and Mrs. Lane. There was to be another party for the two, to be given by Mrs. Lane, when the harvest was in. Meanwhile an invitation arrived to Emily McVeagh's wedding, for Betsy and Alfred. It was a large, elegant invitation on card as fine as best china, and it stood on the breakfast table at the Redways', and at the sight of it Bert took off into a rage. He had been bad since Betsy came, drinking more, and unpredictably
emotional about everything. ‘Just you look at that,' he jeered. ‘And who the hell does Emily McVeagh think she is? Lady Muck, that's what she is.'