Home for Christmas (28 page)

And so he left.

She was staring out of the kitchen window again when the sound of the door closing came to her. She was still there when she heard the sound of his motor car starting up and wished he had come on horseback. I might not have heard the sound of horses’ hooves she thought, then shook herself, thinking how foolish the notion.

‘Where am I? I’m not in heaven, am I?’ said Agnes, eyeing the shrew-eyed woman with the big headdress in alarm.

‘You had an accident,’ said the nurse who appeared to have been taking her pulse.

Agnes tugged up the bedclothes so tightly tucked in around her, and peered the length of her body.

‘I’ve still got my legs and everything, have I?’ Her expression was troubled, her voice edging on the shrill.

‘Silly girl! Of course you have!’

The nurse snatched at the bedclothes, tucking them back in tightly. Agnes was obliged to remove her arms swiftly before it became a struggle to get them back out at all.

‘What did I do?’ asked Agnes.

‘Something to do with a starting handle, Miss. I understand the car backfired and jolted you up into the air. You landed heavily and the starting handle flew out and hit you on the head.’

Agnes frowned as she tried to recall the sequence of events, namely what had she been doing prior to this. She recalled the smell of earthy potatoes and strong cheese. She’d been in the village store with Lydia. They’d bought provisions to sustain them over the weekend.

She looked around the ward. A dear old soul with china blue eyes was waving to her from across the room. There was a large lump in the middle of the other bed, cocooned in bedclothes. The lump was snoring loudly.

‘Is that my friend Lydia over there?’ she asked, vowing she would never sleep in the same room as her friend if she were that snoring lump in the bed opposite.

The nurse snorted contemptuously, not unlike the sound coming from across the way, though not so loud.

‘That is Mrs Hooker, the parson’s wife. She’s just had a baby. I’ll thank you not to disturb her. She’s had a hard time and needs all the rest she can get.’

Agnes thought she’d said Honker, which would have been considerably more appropriate.

‘Your friend went back to Rose Cottage. I believe she left the windows open, so Sam Dowding took her there in his pony and trap. She said she would call back lunchtime. You have an hour to wait. It’s quite a long walk.’

Agnes’s lively mind was already skimming around as normal; Lydia was all right, but there was one other fear tugging at her nerve ends.

‘My car.
The
car. It is all right is it? It’s not damaged.’

‘Not as far as I know,’ said the nurse who was now rearranging the contents of an enamel tray sitting on top of an enamel framed table of the same colour as the tray. ‘Not that I know that much about motor cars, but … What do you think you’re doing?’ she cried, her voice shrill enough to cut nerves in half.

‘I’m going to sort out my motor car and see where Lydia’s got to,’ said Agnes, who was already out of bed, tugging her clothes out of the bedside closet and piling them untidily on the bed.

The nurse, Mavis Davis, the doctor’s wife, was not amused. ‘I really do not think …’

‘I’ll do my thinking for myself. I have things to do.’ She winced as a searing pain shot from her temple along the side of her head. It stilled her, though not for long. She was all action again once the pain had passed, pulling on her clothes whilst cursing anyone who dared damage her employer Mrs Nickleby’s car.

Doctor Davis’s wife, a strong-willed woman who had determined to keep to her profession despite being married, bustled out after her, all the way protesting that she really should rest, and that Doctor Davis would be very angry indeed, when he found out she had discharged herself.

Once outside the hospital, Agnes stopped to get her bearings. The cottage hospital was at one end of the High Street, but which end?

She turned at the sound of a church clock striking the hour to where a staunchly square Norman tower showed above the roofs of cottages, houses and high street shops. Agnes remembered it was close to the village shop and hurtled in that direction.

Freshly dressed in a pale green dress with wide white collar, white gloves, a cream hat and canvas boots tightly laced up at the front, Lydia walked close to the edge of the road.

The sun was shining and a fresh breeze whipped Lydia’s skirt around her legs and blew tendrils of hair across her face.

The green verge was rampant with bright red poppies and pale blue cornflowers. The smell of freshly mown hay was in the air and birds were twittering in the trees lining the road.

She was glad of the fresh air on her cheeks and only wished it would also cool her body. The memory of Robert’s muscular torso pressing down on hers was vivid; she burned at the thought of it. Hopefully Agnes wouldn’t notice the brightness in her eyes and the tension in her shoulders. She wanted to skip, run and jump, but had a care for her friend’s feelings. She would not rub salt into the wounds Agnes tried so hard to hide.

The sudden honking of a car horn burst into her thoughts.

‘Agnes! You’re supposed to be in hospital,’ said Lydia as she climbed aboard. ‘What are you doing, out of bed already?’

Agnes grinned. ‘Looking forward to breakfast. That old battle-axe out there tried to keep me in bed, but I had other ideas. Have you had breakfast yet?’

‘It’s nearly lunchtime. I don’t have any eggs. The box got soggy in the rain and they fell out of the bottom.’

‘Never mind. We bought other things. I fancy bacon in a sandwich with cheese. Have you ever tried that? It’s a bit of a luxury back in Myrtle Street, but wonderful if you can afford it.’

I can afford it, thought Lydia who had bought the supplies in the village shop. Not that she minded, except that talking about bacon reminded her that half of it was gone, and so was the bread. Robert had eaten his fill. Agnes was bound to notice there wasn’t as much as there should be. Lydia decided a little preparation would allay suspicion.

‘I can’t believe how much I ate for breakfast this morning,’ she said brightly, her cheeks almost as red as the roadside poppies. ‘It must be the country air.’

On arrival back at Rose Cottage, Lydia went ahead, promising to cook the best lunch – or bacon and cheese sandwich – that Agnes had ever tasted.

‘Are you going to have one too?’ Agnes called after her.

‘I’m not sure I’ve got room,’ Lydia called back from halfway down the garden path. Her stomach rumbled in protest. It had been four hours since breakfast, but she had given the impression of eating a man-sized feast. It was best Agnes believed that.

After securing the gear stick, Agnes jumped down from the car, her feet landing in a patch of treacly mud.

‘Oh no,’ she exclaimed, looking down at her muddied button-up boots. ‘These were new boots. I love them as much as my yellow straw hat.’

Her gaze strayed from her boots to the tyre marks running around the patch of lane at the front of the cottage. She thought nothing of them; they were just tyre marks, though some imprints differed, tracks made by tyres wider than the ones on her employer’s car.

She concluded they belonged to whoever had brought Lydia back yesterday.

‘Now for that bacon and cheese sandwich,’ she murmured, her mouth watering in anticipation.

Lydia had thrown the kitchen windows wide open. The pale cream curtains billowed in on the back of a gentle breeze.

Lydia was slicing what remained of the bread with an oversized carving knife. Agnes watched her, thinking how ladylike she was, how beautiful with her glossy dark hair and dark grey eyes. Her complexion was creamy, her cheeks a little more pink today than she’d ever seen them. When Lydia caught her watching and smiled, her eyes were dancing, brighter than she’d ever seen them.

‘I do know how to slice bread,’ said Lydia, presuming Agnes was about to criticise; after all, she was the daughter of a cook, had been in domestic service and knew how to do almost anything in a kitchen.

‘I feel such a fool,’ said Agnes. ‘I’m sorry for spoiling our weekend.’

Lydia paused in slicing the bread and looked at her with those luminous grey eyes; eyes like polished pewter.

‘It’s not a problem. Honestly, it’s not. I’m just glad you’re fully recovered. You are fully recovered aren’t you?’

Agnes saw the concerned frown creasing Lydia’s brow and immediately decided to lie.

‘Yes. The doctor said so.’

Lydia heaved a sigh of relief. ‘And anyway, it was the car’s fault, not yours.’

‘I suppose so. I really have to be more careful with starting handles.’

‘There surely has to be a better method of starting a car,’ said Lydia.

Agnes chewed on a crust of bread and shook her head. ‘Not in our lifetime. Starting handles are more easily handled by men than women; that alone is a good enough reason not to improve them.’

Lydia laughed at Agnes’s comment. If ever Agnes did marry, her husband was going to find his wife to be a very independent and spirited woman.

‘Mr Dowding, the man who brought me back yesterday, isn’t of that frame of mind,’ Lydia said jokingly.

‘His car hasn’t got a starting handle?’ Agnes asked, amazed and intrigued by such a revelation.

‘No,’ Lydia laughed. ‘His vehicle has two ears, four legs and a tail. Oh, and it pulls a two-wheeled trap behind it!’

Agnes stopped chewing the bread and eyed her curiously. ‘I thought you came back by car. There are two sets of tyre tracks outside. I suppose I could be mistaken, unless somebody hereabouts has a car.’

‘I believe the doctor does,’ blurted out Lydia, bending over the kitchen sink to hide her reddening face.

‘I suppose so,’ said Agnes, but she didn’t remark that she already knew that the doctor, like this Mr Dowding, drove a pony and trap.

Mrs Nickleby safely dropped off at the shops, Agnes headed for the church hall. The main building was of red brick, its doors and windows trimmed in bricks the colour of Colman’s mustard. Although she’d been accepted by the Voluntry Aid Detachment, Agnes wanted to give one more try at becoming a ‘proper’ ambulance driver.

‘If conscientious objectors can drive ambulances, why can’t I?’

The car alone provoked amazed expressions on the faces of the men waiting in the queue. On seeing Agnes dressed in jodhpurs, a man’s tweed jacket and a leather cap, their eyebrows rose even higher.

A notice outside the hall proclaimed that the proposed British Expeditionary Force were in need of ancillary support in the form of ambulance drivers, clerical and medical staff, stretcher-bearers and field hygiene units. She scanned the notice avidly, her mind ticking like a bomb about to go off. This was what she needed and they needed her.

One snotty-nosed boy offered to give the car a polish whilst she was gone. Two equally scruffy kids stood behind him.

Fists fixed on hips, Agnes looked them over.

‘You’ve got the job. I don’t want any sticky fingers over it mind,’ she told them.

‘I can use me jumper,’ he said to her.

Agnes eyed the grey jumper, noticing that the front was full of holes.

‘Here,’ she said after a deep rummage in her pocket. ‘Have a sixpence. You can buy a new jumper with it.’

The boy had freckles and a cheeky smile. ‘Spend sixpence on a new jumper? Not bloody likely!’

The administrator in charge of enrolling people for the ancillary services, glanced up at her, asked her name, and then looked again.

‘You’re a woman! In that get-up it’s downright questionable! Are you one of those funny women who don’t like men?’

There were sniggers from the men in the queue behind her.

One bushy eyebrow dropped over his eye, completely obliterating it from view.

‘Not all men. I do have my favourites. One of them just happens to be a pilot in the Royal Flying Corps. I want to follow him to France. I want to do my bit to make sure he stays alive and gets back. If I have to don mannish attire to do so, then I will. Haven’t you ever heard that song, “Sweet Polly Oliver”?’

His eyes were liverish, the whites tinged with yellow. The bags hanging beneath his eyes were puffy and purple edged. He had to be in his early fifties, an old soldier with old beliefs and dragged in to fill in forms. He probably didn’t much like the job. He would also take a lot of convincing.

‘I can see you’ve never heard of her,’ said Agnes gamely and straightway broke into song.

When she came to the lines,
I’ll list for a soldier, and follow my love
, the men in the queue behind her clapped and shouted bravo.

‘Well, I suppose pen pushers aren’t going to be right up there with the soldiers,’ said the administrator, his bushy brows seeming to rise up and down independently before levelling out.

‘I beg your pardon, but I’m not the sort to put up with inky fingers all day,’ Agnes declared. ‘I want to drive an ambulance.’

The bushy eyebrows went up and down again. ‘And what makes you think you can drive an ambulance, my good woman?’

‘I’m a professional driver, my good man. Why else do you think I’m wearing this get-up?’

Agnes returned her employer’s car and met Lydia on the corner of Myrtle Street.

‘You’re still wearing your work clothes,’ Lydia said to her.

Agnes usually changed into a skirt before coming home. Today she hadn’t bothered. The look on her face said it all.

‘You’ve done it?’ Lydia asked, hardly able to believe it was true. ‘That’s what you wanted to tell me.’

Agnes grinned from ear to ear, lifting her skirts and dancing a little jig while singing ‘Sweet Polly Oliver’.

‘They weren’t going to; that old codger doing the enrolment looked as though he’d fought at Mafeking or in the Transvaal. Not one where women ever went, anyway; not unless they were nurses that is.’

Lydia threw back her head, laughed and clapped her hands.

‘Agnes Stacey! An ambulance driver. Who would have ever thought it?’

‘I’ve got to train here first, but I’ve insisted on going over when the men go over. No point me motoring around back here when the injured are over there, is it now?’