Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings (13 page)

‘Sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘You must know what I mean though, after your experience in the First World War caper.’

Roger stiffened. ‘What experience?’ he asked sharply. ‘I wasn’t… I was too young for that one, Chris. I—’ He stopped as Christopher cut in, interrupting him.

‘I didn’t mean you, personally, Pa. I meant, you know, losing the cousins and so on. Hearing the news, day after day, of the carnage in the trenches. Ypres. The Somme and everything…’ Christopher failed to notice his father’s reaction to this or how the tension seemed to leave him, allowing him to relax into his armchair as his son continued. ‘I mean this tit for tat stuff. They blast Coventry to kingdom come so the next night we send a bunch of kids over to blow up Hanover or some other unlucky city. Fax gets incinerated but the bloke in the Dornier ends up spread all over a five-acre field in Hampshire, so that makes it all right! It’s madness!’ He paused. The last of a log collapsed into ash in the hearth. ‘That girl…Georgina…’

‘She’s a pacifist, Christopher!’

He met his father’s eyes and after a moment lowered his lids and downed the remains of his drink.

‘Yes. I know.’ What he was thinking was inexcusable.
Almost blasphemous, when he considered his dead and injured friends. He must be drunk. He would go to bed.

Roger sat over the last half-inch of his whiskey and heard his son moving between bathroom and bedroom. When the house was quiet the father raked the ashes, stood the guard in front of the fire and went to his bedroom.

By mid-April Edward-John was home for the Easter holidays, Andreis had reached the point in his painting when he no longer required Annie to model for him and one Saturday afternoon, her wavering intentions bolstered by Iris, Hester had boarded the bus to Exeter where she had undergone the trauma of the selection and purchase of a frock. Coupons had been snipped from her ration book and several pound notes extracted from her purse. She had worn her new dress at supper that night and, although pleased with the compliments she received, had refused to join the girls when they left for an evening in the pub.

Mabel’s grandmother, together with the two-year-old Arthur, had visited for a weekend. To enable the Hodges family to sleep together in one room, Iris had moved in with Taffy, an arrangement which she preferred and which, with Alice’s approval, became permanent.

Arthur, looking older than in Mabel’s photograph, hurled himself into the embrace of his sister, whom he called
May-May
, and spent most of the weekend with his plump arms locked round her neck, her thick waist or one or other of
her massive thighs. She took him to the Bayliss farm and persuaded Ferdie to give him a ride on the tractor and on the quieter of the two carthorses. She sat him astride the most placid of the milking cows and showed him how to throw corn to the chickens. On the Monday she wept when her visitors left for London.

Winnie and Marion had succeeded in re-organising their social life and now that their whereabouts were known, servicemen from the several military training establishments and airbases in the vicinity contrived to collect them in staff cars and return them in the nick of time to the hostel on Saturday nights and sometimes during the week. Occasionally whole lorry loads of the girls would be borne off to dance halls in Exeter or barrack messes where, to recordings of Glenn Miller and Duke Ellington and sometimes to live military bands, they jitterbugged and quickstepped, pirouetting at arm’s length. Or they could be found locked in a close embrace but conducting themselves with caution for they were, most of them, sensible,
well-behaved
young women, aware of what was required of them if they were to avoid the disaster of besmirched reputations or, worse still, of pregnancy. They strutted and, to some extent, they teased but only because they were expected to tease and enjoyed it as much as the young men enjoyed being teased. If one girl or another drank too many
gin-and-oranges
, then one girl or another would take her in hand, sit her down with a cup of tea or remove her to the safety of
the Ladies until the army truck arrived to convey them, hot, tousled, hiccuping, giggly but intact, back to the farm.

Marion and Winnie seldom spent their evenings with the main group of the Lower Post Stone girls and they, more than the others, received gifts from the servicemen and, according to Rose, more than gifts. Once, stripping their beds on laundry day, Rose had discovered a Post Office book under Marion’s pillow. The account was, unusually, in the names of both girls. Each week there were entries which, confirming Rose’s darkest deductions, exceeded their combined Land Army wages. She confided her suspicions to her son, Dave, who had recently been briefly home on leave. The sight of her boy in khaki turned Rose’s stomach.

Early on a wet Wednesday afternoon towards the end of April the lorry brought Winnie and Marion back to the farmhouse.

‘It’s her monthlies,’ Marion announced. ‘She came on when we was having our sandwiches.’ Marion watched as Winnie eased herself onto one of the kitchen chairs and doubled up with pain. Her face was white and beads of perspiration stood on her forehead.

‘Reckon I strained meself,’ she said between gritted teeth. In the yard Fred sounded the horn of the idling truck and Alice, filling a hot-water-bottle for Winnie told Marion to get back to her afternoon’s work. Marion hesitated.

‘I’m worried about her, Mrs Todd!’ she said miserably.

‘And well you might be,’ Rose snapped and then, drawing Alice aside, continued in a lowered voice. ‘That be more than “monthlies”, Alice! She needs to see the doctor and fast!’

They put Winnie into Fred’s lorry and, Alice beside her, drove her to Ledburton where the local doctor examined her and had her admitted to the cottage hospital.

That evening, with both Alice and Winnie conspicuously absent, the girls ate the meal which Rose, for the first time, had prepared single-handedly. She told the hushed table what she knew, but not what she suspected, finally drawing the girls’ attention to her own culinary achievement on their behalf.

‘You are a wonder, Mrs Crocker,’ Gwennan said nastily, her face hardening when Rose retaliated.

‘Kind of you to say so, missy, and since you’m so smart you can slice up that loaf for tomorrow’s packed lunches!’

Hester, on her way through to the scullery with a load of dirty plates, heard the sound of the returning truck and peered out of the low window into the twilight.

‘The lorry’s back!’ she called. ‘Missus Todd’s getting out… But Winnie bain’t with ’er!’

They sat Alice down at the table and gave her a cup of tea because, Rose insisted, she must be famished.

‘They’re keeping her in hospital for a few days,’ Alice said, confronted with anxious, though in some cases merely curious, faces. ‘She was asleep when I left. Is everything all right here?’ Rose assured her that it was and that, as a
gesture of helpfulness, the girls had volunteered to do the washing-up. The girls groaned good-naturedly and Annie began to collect the used cutlery.

‘We don’t have to do this, you know!’ Marion whined but it was a muted protest.

As soon as the girls were occupied in the scullery and she had the warden’s ear, Rose whispered, encouraging her to confide, ‘The doctors didn’t say what the matter is then?’ Alice sipped her tea for a moment and then answered quietly that they had not but that she supposed it was as Marion had suggested. Winnie had been moving heavy bags of swedes and the pulling and dragging had proved too much for her. Disappointed, Rose bit her lip and considered sharing her suspicions with one or other of the girls but the one most likely to enjoy a scandal was Gwennan, whose tight-laced Welshness irritated Rose. Also, there were ramifications to the situation which were beginning to nudge at Rose and to alarm her.

In the scullery Gwennan had sidled up to Marion.

‘Bet you won’t try that again, eh!’ she muttered as Rose approached with the last of the dishes, her sharp ears picking up Gwennan’s words.

‘I don’t know what you’re on about, Taff,’ Marion whined defensively.

‘Yes, you does, Marion!’ Rose muttered, adding, still quietly but loudly enough for the other girls to hear her, ‘and so do the rest of you. But if you knows what’s good for
you, you’ll keep it to yourselves!’ Gwennan, in her sing-song voice, demanded to know why.

‘’Cos if Mr Bayliss found out he’d have Winnie and Marion out of here so fast their feet wouldn’t touch the floor!’ Rose hissed.

‘Well, they shouldn’t have done it! It’s disgraceful!’ Gwennan snapped back.

‘Of course they shouldn’t!’ Georgina said coolly. ‘But if Mr Bayliss finds out about it he would hold Mrs Todd responsible!’

‘If you ask me,’ Gwennan continued, enjoying herself, ‘Mrs Todd don’t know what happened! She thinks Winnie hurt herself lifting swedes!’

Hester was following the conversation as an observer follows a tennis match, her head turning from one speaker to another, eyes wide and mouth ajar.

‘But she did…! Didn’t she?’ she breathed, confused, searching the girls’ faces. They groaned and Gwennan told her not to be so stupid.

‘Reckon you’re right, Taff,’ Annie said, ‘about Mrs Todd not knowing. And she mustn’t know, ’cos if she did she’d probably feel obliged to tell Mr Bayliss and—’ Annie stopped abruptly as Alice appeared in the doorway with her teacup and saucer. ‘Nearly done now, Mrs Todd!’ Annie continued brightly, filling the awkward silence, lifting the last plate out of the suds and inserting it into the wooden rack, next to its fellows. Rose suggested that Alice might
like to eat her dinner, which would be ruined if kept waiting in the oven for much longer.

The following Saturday was Edward-John’s tenth birthday. As Iris’s twenty-second had fallen during the previous week it was decided that the two occasions should be jointly celebrated with a cake and candles at teatime.

James Todd had sent his son a selection of additional pieces to add to the already comprehensive Meccano set with which the boy played in an attic directly above the bathroom. Here, after the evening meal, well muffled against the cold, Edward-John spent as much time as his mother would allow him, meticulously constructing bridges, cranes and towers while the pipes gurgled, the lavatory cistern hissed, the distant strains of the gramophone, the untuned piano and from directly beneath him, the rise and fall of the girls’ voices as they took their shared baths and rinsed out their smalls, floated up through the ill-fitting floorboards.

As Rose carried the birthday cake through to the recreation room, its candles illuminating the gloom of the cross-passage, Margery Brewster delivered Winnie back from the hospital.

Alice greeted them and invited them to join the birthday party. But Winnie declined and Marion took her friend by the arm.

‘I’ll see to her,’ she said, drawing her towards the narrow staircase.

‘Light duties for a week,’ Margery brusquely informed Alice. ‘Then she should be as good as new. I’ll let Roger have the certificate.’ She smiled at Edward-John and agreed to stay long enough to eat a slice of his birthday cake.

In their room Marion and Winnie exchanged glances.

‘You OK, Win?’ Marion asked, lighting their cigarettes. When her friend nodded she continued anxiously, ‘At the hospital… Did anyone…?

‘No. No one guessed what happened. When they told me I’d lost it,’ Winnie said, exhaling, ‘I made out it happened natural.’ There was a pause.

‘I’m ever so sorry, Win.’

‘Not your fault.’ Winnie said dully.

Marion stared at the floorboards. ‘What bugs me is that sergeant! Struttin’ around, not knowin’ what he’s done or what’s ’appened!’ she said bitterly.

‘Well, nothin’ ’as, ’as it! Well, not to ’im any road!’

‘And here’s you, looking like you’ve been hit by a Sherman bloody tank!’

Winnie drew in smoke. She was safely back in their room. She felt tired and her legs were a bit wobbly but she had survived. She felt almost magnanimous.

‘It might not have been the sergeant…’ she murmured, ashing her Woodbine in a saucer on their overcrowded dressing table. They sat, one on each of the two beds, and looked at each other. They heard a burst of applause from the recreation room, then, to a piano accompaniment, the
girls sang ‘Happy Birthday’. There was a tap on the bedroom door and when Marion asked who was there it was Mabel who pushed it open with her foot. She carried two plates of raspberry jelly, each decorated with a blob of Devonshire cream but her usually sunny face was overcast.

‘Mrs Crocker said I was to bring you these,’ she announced flatly. ‘And Edward-John and Iris says do you want some of their cake…’

‘So why the po-face, Mabel?’ Marion’s tone was defensive. ‘Aren’t you going to say you’re sorry Win’s been poorly?’ There was a pause while Mabel struggled to hold her tongue and failed.

‘She hasn’t been poorly though, has she!’ she said, her fleshy face colouring as her feelings revealed themselves. ‘I weren’t born yesterday! I know what went on! We all do!’

‘Nosy bloody parkers then!’ Marion snapped, dragging on her Woodbine, while Winnie, unable to withstand Mabel’s accusing eyes, lowered her own and stared at the floorboards.

‘You should of kept it! Not done that to it!’ Mabel blurted.

‘Who says?’ Winnie demanded but her voice was fragile.

‘I does! Poor little beggar… You got no right!’ But Mabel’s anger was dissolving into grief, leaving her with brimming eyes and the image of the small twist of gory tissue that should have been a child. Marion’s shrewd eyes were narrowing.

‘What’s it to you, Mabel, eh?’ she said. ‘’Ow come you’re in such a state about it? Unless…’ She saw Mabel blanch. ‘Unless that “baby brother” of yours…!’ Mabel’s reaction confirmed her guess. ‘Little what’s-his-name…’

‘Arfur!’ Winnie breathed, her attention caught.

‘’E does look like you, Mabel! Very like you! ’E’s your kid, in’t ’e!’ Mabel protested that she didn’t know what Marion was on about. ‘Wonder what your new fella would make of that then, eh?’ Marion continued spitefully. ‘Your Ferdie? Told him about it, ’ave you? Have you, Mabel?’