Muddy Boots and Silk Stockings (8 page)

‘What am I gonna do?’ she wailed and behind them Georgina, who had been the last to leave the kitchen, shouted, ‘All aboard, Fred.’

‘I’d keep my mouth shut if I was you,’ Fred murmured and when Mabel remained, white-faced, breathing noisily, he released the clutch and added, ‘C’mon, girl! Get in!’ 

The young man and Alice stared at one another. ‘You the lady in charge?’ he asked finally and, when she said she was, began to tell her what had happened. In the kitchen, Rose had continued to sing, her voice drifting out over the clatter of saucepans and of tap water running into the deep sinks. After ‘The White Cliffs of Dover’ she had begun another
song; now she was making a big finish on ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ after which there was a short silence before she threw open a window and called out to Alice that it was time for their elevenses.

Alice led the young man into the recreation room, persuaded him to sit and hurried through to the kitchen. Rose was standing at the table pouring their tea. She looked at Alice and froze.

‘What’s happened?’ she demanded, thinking at once of her son.

‘It’s Chrissie,’ Alice said. ‘She went to Plymouth.’ Rose experienced a wave of relief and was immediately angry with Christine for giving her such a scare.

‘Didn’t I say she was wilful,’ she blustered, spilling a little of the tea before steadying herself.

‘You don’t understand,’ Alice said. ‘There was an air raid. The boarding house was hit while her husband was out buying their supper. They dug her out at five o’clock this morning. She’s dead, Rose!’

Rose stared. ‘Oh my Lord!’ she breathed, her hard face collapsing into the softer folds of shock. ‘I thought it was Dave! I thought you was going to tell me that my Dave…! Oh, that poor girl!’

They brought Ron into the kitchen where it was warmer and made him sit and drink some strong, sweet tea. He sat with the cup between his battered hands and stared for some time at the floor. Then he looked slowly round the kitchen.

‘I wanted to come ’ere,’ he said. Alice noticed that his accent was similar to Chrissie’s. ‘To see where she was. She told me she liked it ’ere… And there’s ’er things. I’d better take ’er things.’

After Ron had been driven away in the naval car that had brought him, a suitcase containing his wife’s clothes on his knees, Rose went to the room Chrissie had shared with Mabel and stripped the sheets and pillowcase from the bed in which she should have spent the previous night.

Using the bicycle which Margery Brewster had provided, Alice pedalled up the valley to the Bayliss farm where she encountered Mabel and asked where she could find their master.

‘He’s in his office,’ Mabel told her, adding anxiously, ‘What’s up, Mrs Todd?’

Roger Bayliss listened while Alice told him all she knew of what had happened. When she finished there was a silence. Then Roger sighed.

‘What am I supposed to tell Margery Brewster?’ he asked Alice. ‘That my warden fails to make certain that the girls in her charge are accounted for each night? That they are roaming about all over the county without permission?’

‘One girl,’ said Alice lamely. ‘And she did ask permission to visit her husband and you refused it. So she—’

‘Disobeyed!’ he cut in. ‘And you failed to notice her absence!’

‘I was told she had gone to bed early.’

‘By whom?’ he persisted. ‘Whoever told you that must have been covering for her!’

‘I’d rather not say who it was. It was my responsibility. I should have checked. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’ Roger Bayliss didn’t respond. Then he asked her if she would inform Margery Brewster or whether she would prefer him to do so. Alice got to her feet.

‘I’ll tell her myself. Of course,’ she said. He opened the door for her and stood aside as she moved through it.

Georgina had been sent to fetch King, one of the farm’s three carthorses, from the farrier’s and was enjoying leading the great, clumsy, gentle creature back to its paddock when she saw Christopher Bayliss leaning against the gate, his father’s hunter tethered nearby. She had not spoken to Christopher since their initial encounter and it occurred to her that she should take this opportunity to apologise to him. He was lighting a cigarette as she approached, managing to conceal from her the shake of his fingers. He flicked the spent match away from him, blew smoke and smiled.

Georgina slowed the horse and when Christopher did not move, said, ‘Excuse me. I need to open the gate.’ He made a great play of moving away from the latch and then reached across to unfasten it for her.

‘Allow me,’ he said but she was there before him, had the gate open and was leading her charge through it. Slipping the halter from King’s huge head, Georgina turned to find
Christopher blocking her way back through the gate. She stood, glaring at him. He laughed.

‘For a pacifist you do seem remarkably aggressive, if I may say so!’

‘You may not,’ she said.

‘OK,’ he smiled. ‘The subject of the war shall be taboo. And I promise not to comment on your appearance, however divine you look!’ He blew smoke.

‘You simply can’t resist being offensive, can you!’ He was still smiling, still blocking her way.

‘Offensive?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘I’ll have you know there are girls who would be delighted with a compliment from me!’ It was an idiotic conversation and at the back of Georgina’s mind was the fact that not only had she previously misjudged him but that she was talking, as though he was some pushy flirt she had encountered at a tennis club hop, to a man who had repeatedly, albeit misguidedly, risked his life for his convictions. Nevertheless, she found herself suggesting that if such girls existed, he should go and compliment them, rather than wasting his time on her.

‘Have dinner with me,’ he said suddenly. If only he hadn’t still been smiling his self-satisfied smile, or if she had understood that the smile was masking a sort of desperation, she might have been kinder. But she declined his invitation and was watching his smile fade when to her surprise he reached out and made a grab for the halter she was carrying,
twisting it tightly round her hands and pulling her towards him. She wrenched free and in doing so slammed the gate towards him so that its bottom rung caught his shin. He grimaced and his face reddened with suppressed anger. Georgina, deeply embarrassed, apologised at once.

‘No, no,’ Christopher said, recovering quickly. ‘My fault. My fault entirely!’ She stood and watched as he unhitched his horse, hauled himself into its saddle, turned it, kicked it into a trot and moved off while she disentangled the halter from her wrist, fastened the gate and stood cursing her stupidity and her short temper. Fred’s voice reached her from the yard. Mr Bayliss was looking for her, he said. She found him in his office. He told her to sit.

‘Bad news, I’m afraid,’ he said.

None of Georgina’s immediate family was in the armed services. Nor were they where enemy bombs fell. When she had left them they had all been in good health. An accident perhaps? Lionel’s motorbike? Her father’s hunter? Her mother’s car? ‘One of your colleagues,’ Roger Bayliss began and, as Rose had done, earlier, Georgina felt a sense of guilty relief that no one close to her was involved. She was shocked by the news of Chrissie’s death, and did not relish the idea of calling the other girls together and breaking the news of it to them as Roger Bayliss was requesting her to do.

In the kitchen of Lower Post Stone Farm Rose was breaking eggs into a deep bowl and whipping them into a batter.
Alice paced about the room and Margery Brewster, a cup of tea cooling in front to her was, as usual, calm in the face of what she would later define as a crisis, her heavy features and slightly hooded eyes suggesting concern and concentration on the matter in hand.

‘Most unfortunate,’ she sighed and the clock ticked on. ‘But the point is that even if you had checked at what… six o’clock, was it?’ Alice said yes, it had been about then that it had been noticed that Chrissie was not at supper. ‘Then it was impossible for you to have prevented her from going,’ Margery concluded. ‘She would have already been in Plymouth by then!’

‘That’s what I keep tellin’ her!’ Rose muttered,
tight-lipped
in the background. Margery was becoming irritated by Alice’s pacing and told her to sit down. ‘Do the girls know what happened?’

‘They will by now,’ said Alice miserably. ‘Mr Bayliss was going to ask Georgina to tell them.’

The girls sat in silence on each side of the swaying lorry as Fred drove them through the dusk, back to the hostel. Heavy cloud had lifted, leaving the western sky a cold, hard, greenish colour which suggested to those who knew about such things that the coming night would be a frosty one. Having discovered that it was slightly warmer in the cab, Winnie and Marion were already in the habit of squeezing in together on the passenger seat next to Fred, their faces
and his solemn tonight, in reflected light from the dimmed headlamps. After a mile or so Marion said, ‘Sod Jerry!’ and Winnie echoed, ‘Sod buggering Jerry!’

‘She were a lovely girl,’ Fred said, remembering how light and soft Christine had felt when he had lifted her down from the truck three short days ago. Where the descent towards Lower Post Stone steepened he changed gear. ‘’Tweren’t a regular raid,’ he told them. ‘Said on the news that a stray Jerry bomber crash landed. Still loaded, ’twas. Hit a row of boarding houses opposite the station. Flattened the lot! Stupid bugger!’ Behind him, in the back of the lorry, Mabel burst into noisy tears.

After a silent supper, the girls drifted away, some to their bedrooms, others to huddle round the fire in the recreation room, one or two to the bathroom for, despite their shock at Chrissie’s death, tomorrow was Saturday and from midday on, those not on dairy duty would have the afternoon and all of Sunday to themselves. Fred collected Edward-John from the bus stop in Ledburton, Alice gave him his supper in her room, escorted him to the bathroom and then, promising him a tour of the farm immediately after breakfast next day, left him in bed, reading his latest Biggles book and went in search of Mabel, who, more distressed than the other girls, had gone to her room and even refused her supper.

At first, when Alice tapped on the door to the room Mabel had shared with Chrissie, there had been no
response. Then, her voice muffled, Mabel said, ‘Go away. I don’t want to see no one.’

‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea,’ Alice coaxed. ‘And a slice of Rose’s cake…’ Mabel opened the door. Her face was puffed and her eyes were almost lost under swollen, reddened lids. Instead of drinking the tea and eating the cake she sat on the edge of her own bed and looked at Chrissie’s while fresh tears spread down her wet cheeks.

‘It was my fault, Mrs Todd,’ she wailed and when Alice said she must not blame herself she interrupted her. ‘But I put her up to it! I said if it was me I’d go to Plymouth whatever Mr Bloody Bayliss said! And she went! And now she ain’t never coming back! It’s no good, Mrs Todd! There’s nothing you nor no one can say as’ll ever change what I done!’ Alice took the girl’s sweaty hands in hers.

‘Listen, Mabel!’ she began. Mabel sat gulping. ‘Just suppose that Chrissie hadn’t gone to Plymouth.’

‘Then she’d still be alive, wouldn’t she!’ Mabel howled angrily.

‘Listen to me!’ Alice persisted. ‘Supposing she hadn’t gone and her husband had gone off, back to sea, in his minesweeper…’ Mabel was beginning to pay attention now, her wet, reddened eyes widening. ‘And supposing,’ Alice went on, ‘that tonight, in the Western Approaches, his ship had been torpedoed…’

‘Yeah…?’ Mabel said, imagining it.

‘And he’d been lost,’ said Alice. ‘How would Chrissie have felt then?’

‘If she hadn’t gone to Plymouth to be with him, you mean?’

‘Yes. On the last night they could have had together? D’you see? D’you see how…’ Suddenly Alice was enveloped in Mabel’s soft, malodorous bulk and held in a tremulous embrace.

‘She wouldn’t never of forgiven herself, would she!’ Mabel said, her moist face pressed against Alice’s.

‘No!’ said the warden, gently disengaging herself. ‘Never. It’s anyone’s guess where it’s safe to be and where it’s dangerous, Mabel.’ Mabel’s heavy frame still juddered as her sobs subsided. Then she began to hiccup. ‘Eat your cake and drink your tea,’ Alice said. ‘Then try to get some sleep.’

‘It’s still bloody awful though, in’it,’ Mabel said shakily.

‘Yes,’ Alice said. ‘Bloody awful.’

When Alice returned to the kitchen Rose was still at work, finishing the last of the clearing up after the evening meal. The next day being Saturday there were no sandwiches to cut. The girls’ damp clothes were airing on the rack.

‘I’ll be off now,’ Rose said, folding her apron and hanging it over a chair-back.

‘You’re very late,’ Alice said. ‘I’m sorry to have left you to it. What with Edward-John arriving and…’ She stopped, her throat closing as the events of the day overwhelmed her. Rose shrugged off the apology and when Alice asked
whether everyone was in, replied heavily that no one had gone out.

‘No…I suppose not,’ said Alice, sitting down wearily at the table and putting her face in her hands. The promised gramophone had not yet been delivered but in the common room someone, with one finger, was picking out a Glenn Miller tune, sight-reading it from a music sheet. Annie, one syllable at a time, was tentatively singing the lyrics.

‘I’m simply not up to this,’ Alice said suddenly and as much to herself as to Rose. Then she raised her head. ‘I shall telephone Mrs Brewster in the morning and tell her I can’t manage here.’

‘You’ll do no such thing!’ said Rose. ‘You’m just tired! And upset!’

‘It’s not only that.’ Alice spoke quietly, her hands clasped in front of her on the scrubbed table. ‘I realised today just how inadequate I am. I’m used to running a home, Rose. Caring for a husband and one small boy. All this is too much for me…!’ She glanced round at the hateful kitchen, realising suddenly that everything was in the wrong place. There were no working surfaces beside the range where they were needed. Nowhere for food to be served, no place where clean dishes could be piled before use or dirty ones stacked, ready for washing-up afterwards. No wonder the preparation and serving of the meals was so chaotic… ‘I should have observed Chrissie more closely!’ she went on. ‘I should have realised how upset she was about not being
allowed to go to Plymouth. Her husband could have come here!’