Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings (2 page)

‘This is Mrs Todd,’ Margery announced, firmly. ‘We are here to see your employer.’

‘Says ’e’ll be five minutes. ’E’s busy with the carpenter. I’m to show you round down here. This way.’ Rose preceded them into the kitchen, turning to catch Alice’s reaction to it for, despite the newly painted walls and whitened plasterwork between the overhead beams, it was gloomy.
‘Scullery’s through there,’ Rose said, indicating a door in the far wall. ‘Two sinks it’s got and beyond it there be a room where us used to make cheese. Reckon that could serve as a laundry.’ Rose noted with obvious pleasure that Alice was clearly taken aback by the kitchen and appeared unwilling to inspect either scullery or potential laundry.

‘Of course the bed linen, towels and the girls’ overalls will be laundered in Ledburton,’ Margery announced comfortingly, but Alice hardly heard her.

‘This here’s the range,’ Rose continued sweetly, pointing to a looming lump of black metal, the doors to its ovens sagging from their hinges. ‘And Mr Bayliss has ordered a paraffin stove with four burners. Now, if you’ll follow me…’ She led them back through the cross-passage and into the room opposite the kitchen. ‘This here’s the parlour,’ she said. ‘Leastways ’twas the parlour. Mr Bayliss says it’s to be a recreation room for the girls now. He’s getting in a piano and a gramophone and there’ll be easy chairs and a sofa I daresay…’ The room was large and square. Two low windows faced south and through the swags of creeper, sunlight speckled the stone floor. Two other windows, facing north, looked out onto the yard. It had the same low beams as the rest of the ground floor and a wide fireplace in the chimney wall. ‘And this through here will be the warden’s room,’ said Rose, opening a door through which a second, smaller room was visible. It too had a double aspect. The bulk of the chimney breast intruded into it, producing an
interesting effect of two areas, each with its own window, one south, one north, and with a small fireplace where the room narrowed. Alice was immediately taken with this room. A divan bed at either end. One for her, the other for Edward-John. Her mother’s desk opposite the fireplace. An armchair on either side of it. It was possible. Someone entered the room behind her.

Roger Bayliss was a gentleman farmer. An educated man whose family had owned its acres for several centuries, living a mile away from this building in the modest but comfortable farmhouse known as Higher Post Stone, to which each generation had added various extensions. Elizabethan solidity had been succeeded by Georgian elegance and Victorian affectation, the result being more interesting than architecturally significant. The man was tall. Alice’s first impression of him was of strong shoulders and a face that, although lacking any particularly distinctive feature, was acceptable, even handsome. His greying hair had once been dark and his eyebrows were showing the first signs of eccentricity. He wore riding breeches, a lightweight waterproof jacket and well-polished leather boots. He held a riding crop in his right hand and stood tapping it irritably against his left palm. It occurred to Alice that he might have been using it on the carpenter. She was dismissing the thought as unworthy while Margery greeted him.

‘Roger!’ she said, extending her hand. ‘Haven’t seen you since the Blatchfords’ Christmas bash! How the hell are
you?’ Alice suspected that for a split second Roger Bayliss was unable to place Margery but he recovered quickly, said that he was well and enquired, not however by name, after the health of her husband. Now it was her turn to look blank. ‘Gordon? He’s fine as far as I know,’ she said, laughing. ‘I’m so damned busy these days I hardly see the man!’ This reminded her of the purpose of her visit. She turned to Alice. ‘May I introduce Mrs Todd?’

In Alice’s hand Roger’s felt large, rough and warm. Hers in his struck him, although her grasp was firm, as cold. Her smooth, narrow fingers slipped through his as she withdrew them. Margery was talking.

‘As I told you on the telephone, Mrs Todd hasn’t quite as much experience as we would like, but she does have a Certificate in Domestic Science and before her marriage took a cordon bleu cookery course in Paris.’ Alice saw one of Roger Bayliss’s eyebrows lift. ‘She has, until the outbreak of war, run her own home, of course, and raised her son…’ It sounded weak. Behind them, Rose cleared her throat, eloquently suggesting her own lack of confidence in Alice. Without looking at her, Roger asked Rose to show their visitor over the upper floor. He did not say please. There was a silence as Alice and Rose left the room. Roger waited until their footsteps had faded. Margery smiled.

‘Your Mrs Crocker seems a bit hostile!’ she said. Roger shrugged.

‘You know these Devonians, Margery. Distrustful of
strangers to a man.’ He peered out of the north window, checking on the horse he had tethered to the yard gate. ‘This Mrs…’

‘Todd,’ Margery finished for him and waited.

‘Isn’t she a bit…’

‘Genteel?’ Margery ventured, hoping he would not bring up the matter of Alice’s lack of experience, confidence or natural authority.

‘Some of these girls are going to be pretty rough characters. Will she be able to handle them?’ Margery avoided giving him a direct answer by flicking through the notes she had attached to Alice’s application form.

‘She’s not quite what we’re looking for, I know. But there’s absolutely no one else I can offer you! Beggars can’t be choosers, Roger!’

Upstairs, Rose’s tour was almost complete. Alice was paying little attention as she had already decided that the prospect of running a hostel in this building was not only beyond her but that her prospective employer shared this opinion.

At one end of the upper floor partitions were already in place, transforming the available space into one large bedroom containing three beds, two slightly smaller rooms, each housing two beds, and a fourth rather cramped room which would also accommodate two girls. Each bedroom had its own low, square window and, as well as its beds, just enough space for the dressing table and wardrobe that would
shortly be moved into it. At the other end of the building, studs were in position for another room, which would make provision for a further two land girls who might be required either to join Roger Bayliss’s workforce, or whose labour could be hired out to one or other of his neighbours. There was also, above the porch, a small space with a tiny, high window, which Rose described as a boxroom, and next to this a bathroom equipped with a stained, white enamelled bath with claw feet, its brass taps bright with verdigris. In one corner was a hand basin, in the other a lavatory.

‘Only one bathroom!’ Alice breathed.

‘One more’n I’ve got!’ Rose snapped. ‘The range heats the water but there’ll not be enough in the tank for separate baths. Reckon they’ll have to share. Still, ’tis better than a tub in front of the kitchen range, which is what I ’as to make do with!’ she finished virtuously.

At the foot of the stairs they encountered Roger and Margery. Roger dispatched Rose to unpack a box of crockery that had arrived that morning.

He stood, regarding Alice, making her feel as though she might be an item of livestock he was considering bidding for at a cattle auction and she wished, more fervently than she had ever wished before, that James was here. That he would put a protective arm round her and explain that it was all a misunderstanding. That she was, of course, to accompany him to Cambridge. But she knew that this was not going to happen and she had recently guessed why.

When Penelope Fisher had first been assigned to James as his secretary and personal assistant, he had mentioned her quite freely and frequently to Alice. My secretary thinks this, says that, has been reading this or that novel, liked this or that film. One evening, before the move to Exeter, he had brought her home for dinner. She was a nice-looking, soberly dressed girl. Rather thin. Rather quiet. Slightly humourless. Harmless enough, Alice had thought. But as the months passed, James had spoken less and less of her to Alice. In fact he had spoken less and less to Alice about anything. Apart from brief discussions of the day’s news of the war and any domestic matter that needed his attention, they communicated very little. When she had asked, over supper one night, whether Miss Fisher would be going with him when his department moved to Cambridge, James had hesitated a touch too long before answering, yes, of course she was going, adding that she was a valued member of his department. Roger Bayliss had begun to speak.

‘Not too daunted, I hope, Mrs Todd?’

Alice hesitated. She wanted to say, yes, she was daunted. She wanted to look helpless. To apologise for wasting his time. To be aboard the bus, travelling back to Exeter. To
re-enter
the depressing safety of the rented room. She cleared her throat and forced herself to meet his eyes.

‘I hadn’t realised quite how…’ she hesitated.

‘Primitive the place is?’ he finished for her.

‘You’ll think me foolish. But I didn’t know. Wasn’t told… that this building was not already in use as a hostel.’

‘I need more labour,’ he said. ‘Lower Post Stone has been lying idle. Seemed sensible to use it as a billet.’

‘I understand that. But I’d expected to be taking on an establishment that was—’

‘Up and running?’ Margery cut in brightly, attempting to ease the tension between the woman who needed work but not this work and the man who needed a warden but not this warden.

‘It’s a valid point, Margery,’ he conceded, glancing at his wristwatch. Margery launched into a spiel.

‘Most of our smaller hostels are very much like this one, Mrs Todd. We’ll see you get all the standard equipment – a bread-slicer for the sandwiches and so on. There’s a telephone in the barn across the yard – for emergencies – and a generator for the lights so you won’t be dependent on oil lamps – at least not downstairs.’

‘If you feel it’s going to be too much for you, Mrs Todd…’ Roger Bayliss sounded dismissive. He had looked at her, listened to her and found her wanting. She felt insulted.

She asked for the weekend to consider, but he shook his head and said it was out of the question. Then he said he had to leave them. That running his farm almost single-handed meant that his time was short. He asked Margery to give Alice his telephone number. ‘Ring me by noon tomorrow if your decision is positive, Mrs Todd. Otherwise I’ll assume
it’s not. All right with you, Margery?’ Margery glanced at Alice and nodded. He excused himself and left them. Rose came into the room with an armful of the old newspapers in which the crockery had been packed. She dumped them in the fireplace, straightened and wiped her hands on her apron. She saw Alice flinch as the yard door slammed noisily behind her employer.

‘That’s Mr Bayliss for you!’ she said, enjoying the effect of her words on Alice. ‘On a bad day you can hear his
door-slams
two fields off.’

Buses from Ledburton into Exeter were infrequent and it was dusk by the time Alice arrived back at the boarding house. She hurried up the stairs, anxious to confirm that Edward-John was safely home.

He was in the rented room, sitting at the table playing Happy Families with his father. He smiled at his mother as she entered but the looks that passed between his parents reaffirmed what he already knew and he sat looking gravely from face to face.

James seemed thinner than Alice remembered. His face was almost gaunt. Guilt perhaps. Or maybe simply the strain of wartime London. His suit was a new one. His appearance was altogether sharper, more suave than when she had last seen him. The bones of his face were as familiar to her as her own and yet he seemed almost a stranger now that she did not share or even know his plans. She wished she could tell
him about the awful farmhouse and the impossible job but she could not. She felt her son’s eyes on her.

‘Have you had your tea, Edward-John?’ When he shook his head Alice took two pounds and fifteen shillings from her purse and told him to give the rent money to Mrs Bowden and to ask her if she would very kindly make him some beans on toast for his tea. He protested, appealing to his father to be allowed to stay.

‘Off you go, there’s a good chap,’ James said.
Edward-John
sighed and left them.

‘This is so awful for him!’ Alice began. ‘I don’t know how you—’ She stopped. Reproach was useless and James did, to his credit, look as wretched as she felt. ‘Why are you here?’ she asked. ‘I wasn’t expecting you until Edward-John’s half-term.’ James got to his feet and walked about the room, making the loosened floorboards creak. His shoes were new and well polished.

‘This situation…’ he began.

‘So your wife and your child are “a situation”, are we?’ James sighed and sat down. After a moment he began again.

‘Penny thinks…’ So it was ‘Penny’ now. He paused. ‘No…I think…’ He wasn’t going to blame his lover or hide behind her feelings. Alice hated him for being so considerate, so noble. ‘I think it’s best if I remove the rest of the stuff I have here and…’

‘And leave us?’ Alice completed the sentence for him and stood, searching his face. ‘Just…leave us, James? Here?’

The scene which followed, conducted in lowered voices so that neither the other tenants, Mrs Bowden or
Edward-John
should get wind of it, was bitter. As they argued James packed a suitcase with the clothes he had previously left in Exeter. He took several of his books from a pile that was stacked against a wall. Since bomb damage had forced the family from the house they owned in Twickenham, their furniture had been stored. Exeter had been thought of as a temporary refuge until a more permanent home, safe from the bombings, could be arranged. As a result of this, James’s personal belongings had been scattered between a warehouse, rented rooms in Exeter and the small flat in Finchley that he was currently sharing with a young colleague. He was closing the suitcase as his son came back into the room. Edward-John looked at the case and then from one parent to the other.

‘Say goodbye to your father, Edward-John,’ said Alice and she went to the door and stood, holding it open.
Edward-John
and his father shook hands. Then James took the weight of the suitcase and went out through the door.