Remembrance Day (26 page)

‘Have you indeed?’ Izaak looked up sternly for a second. ‘This is serious talk. Do you know what is expected of a man in making such an offer?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Guy hesitated, feeling this was not going well.

‘Let me tell you how it is done, provided she gives her consent. There must be a period of walking out together in public. There must be a period of spiritual preparation, a house has to be built, stocked with all the basic linens, furniture and kitchenware a bride needs to set up her own home. Then there is a ceremony to be undertaken at the right time of the season so many can visit the Homestead, a feast to prepare, and all this must fit around our farm duties. Some have had to wait many years for such a coming together.’ Izaak looked up, seeing the disappointment on Guy’s face. Then he burst out laughing, ‘Sit down, sit down…before you fall down. Don’t look so flattened. Five years might do it. Did not Jacob wait seven years for his Rachel?’

Guy sighed. Five years was an age at his time of life. ‘I was hoping for five months, brother,’ he replied.

‘Oh, Charles, I’m only teasing. I know how it is between the two of you. Anyone can see the Lord put a fire in both your eyes the moment you met. What took you so long to spit it out?’

Only then did Guy flop down with relief. ‘I promise to take care of her.’

‘You will cherish each other. That is what marriage means: two horses hitched to the same wagon pulling in the same direction—well, most of the time,’ he chuckled. ‘You were brought here for a purpose, Charles. Besides, every farm needs new bloodstock if it is to prosper,’ he winked. ‘Now let’s see what the women have to say.’

As if on cue, Miriam and Rose appeared from the doorway, smiling. ‘Well, sisters, how say you?’

‘It looks as if it’s going to be a busy summer and a busy fall this year,’ Miriam said. ‘November is a good wedding month.’

Rose looked at Guy with such relief and tenderness. He just wanted to get down on his knees and pray, what have I done to deserve such fortune?

Selma looked down at her daughter’s pink face and cried with relief to see such a perfect baby staring back at her.

Lisa was fussing over the bed. ‘She’s so beautiful. What will you call her?’

She’d agreed with Jamie that if it was a girl it would be her choice, and his if it was a boy, but he was too busy on location out of town to worry about names.

‘I’m going to give her two names,’ she smiled. ‘Esther, to please my mother and Sharland, after the village where I was born…Sharland Esther. What do you think?’

‘Ripping!’ Lisa said. ‘But how will you manage here?’ She looked around. ‘It doesn’t get any bigger, does it?’

They had not made the move she’d hoped for. Money was leaking through their fingers, but Lisa had bought a wicker crib for the baby that would do for a few months. Selma wrote to Jamie hoping he’d be back to help her with little Shari, as she had quickly taken to calling her. But the regular work he was getting with the studios meant he was hardly ever at home.

His new agent, Danny Steel, was hustling hard on his behalf.

Jamie did a good line in mountain men in beaver skins
with long hair and beards. It looked as if she would have to go back to being Zelma Barr, pioneer woman, soon and little Shari might be used as an extra too, if the authorities allowed. She might as well push a pram up and down Frontier Street with a real baby in it, and if she howled, who was to know as there were no sound?

Since their honeymoon, and once her belly began to bloom, there had been no more long trips on location. She made trips to the ocean in the vacations with Lisa, who always plugged the gap that Jamie seemed to leave. Yet Lisa was growing up fast now and had a gang of high school friends. She wanted to go to college to study geography. Selma wasn’t looking forward to the time when they must inevitably go their separate ways.

Her new life was like a row of skittles being knocked down: emigrating, marriage, and now a baby. Her Yorkshire roots had been yanked up and transplanted into this dry soil. She wasn’t sure they’d struck, and kept thinking of that journey south to Arizona, to those rides in the sagebrush and mesquite, the mountains and canyons that in a strange way felt more like home than here.

‘I’ll take you there, one day,’ she whispered as her baby suckled on her breast. ‘You’d like it there. We’ll have some ponies to ride.’ Tears rolled down her face, tears of pride and sadness. If only Jamie would come home and see his little girl. She wanted them all to be a proper family.

None of this went into the long letter home with the photos of Shari in her Victorian lacy dress and bonnet, the one Selma had borrowed from the costume department for the baby’s baptism. Shari had a fuzz of reddy golden hair and dark eyes, an unusual combination. She was her daddy’s girl all right. Selma told Mam that she was born premature
so as not to raise any suspicions that she was conceived out of wedlock.

As the weeks went by and Jamie didn’t rush home but made more and more excuses about new scenes to shoot, a niggling doubt began to grow in her gut that he was going to leave her alone, and that scared her.

Nothing was going to get in the way of his career now it was taking off, especially not a tiny baby. She was on her own now, fending for herself, and there was no choice but to try for work again. They couldn’t live on air.

Hester followed the debates in the newspapers with growing interest, knowing there was a movement against capital punishment for men in the Forces. The Labour MP Ernest Thurtle was championing the cause at the National Federation of Discharged Soldiers. There was talk of a bill in Parliament to abolish capital punishment in the military. She tried to broach the subject with Essie but any talk of the war and she clammed shut.

They had never discussed what had really happened to Frank. It was a closed book better not opened if they were to stay on the same side. It was enough that her own stubbornness had persuaded the parish council to adopt the tolling bell on Armistice Day and nothing else. The Church had followed suit, and disaffected villagers had their heroes carved onto the Sowerthwaite Memorial.

This decision was unpopular but occasionally someone sidled up to Hester, after heated discussions, to whisper, ‘All or nobody…It’s got to be right that all those young boys who volunteered or were conscripted, who served their country at a cost to their lives, should be honoured. If some fell short of bravery, it’s not up to us to judge.’

Most people knew about the Bartleys saving the Cantrell twin all those years ago. It was a legend much embellished, and for Hester every reminder of it brought such turmoil of emotions. She owed Frank Bartley support.

Essie was proving a loyal servant, diligent to the point of obstinacy, at times. Woe betide her if she messed up her spring cleaning, the rug brushing, the cupboard clearingouts. Waterloo House sparkled. For one week each year, Essie took the train to her sister’s home and from there they took the air at Bridlington or Scarborough for a brief holiday.

How Hester envied Essie those photographs: Selma’s wedding portrait and then the birth of her daughter—whoever named a child after a village? But they were Americans now; they did things differently there. She had to admit she was a pretty child with a mop of curls and dark eyes.

There was some mystery about the husband, the one who was in the moving pictures; Big Jim Barr was his stage name. He didn’t seem to play much part in the family and now mother and daughter were taking film parts and Essie was saving to make the big journey herself.

But with a downturn in jobs and the current bleak climate, things were looking bad. The war had bankrupted the nation, but all the war machinery still had to be paid for. There was no money for luxuries. Those lost men had left so many gaps. Most of Hester’s friends had lost sons and heirs. She had no heirs to look forward to and she was jealous of Essie’s one little sparkling grandchild.

She had letters to cherish, which she displayed like medals in the privacy of her rooms. Essie was tactful that way, not
rubbing in the fact that Hester’s own remaining son was estranged for reasons no one would ever guess.

With each passing month the hope of ever being reconciled was fading. She had no idea where Guy was. All she knew was his false name, Charles Arthur West. Sometimes she caught herself scouring the pages of
The Times
, just in case there was a mention of his name. Not even Essie knew this secret shame. How could she explain that if the war memorial was ever erected, it would have the wrong name at its head?

As months turned into years, the two widows drew closer, more companionable, each within the well-defined roles of mistress or servant until those roles became blurred by familiarity and everyday contact. Essie was never over-familiar, always correct, but Hester looked forward to their suppers in the kitchen in front of the range, talking over her day’s gardening and Essie’s adventures into the cookery books. With all those fresh vegetables in the garden and a copy of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, she had become more adventurous in her recipes, always frugal, and making one meal do two days if she could. A variety of meatless dishes suited Hester’s frequent dyspepsia and poor appetite.

Common sense told her the house was too large. The stables were now bare, the car had long since been sold for a more modest version that she could drive, should she choose. There was just Maggie and Essie to see to her needs where once there had been half a dozen servants. The washing was laundered in the village, the garden she managed herself, and Beaven came out of retirement to see to the lawns and heavier work.

Some weeks she need never wander out of the gates of
Waterloo unless for matins or evensong—never both; that smacked of religious enthusiasm.

Essie had no truck with church at all. The war business had taken away her faith in the providence of an Almighty. Hester had found it had drawn her closer to a basic trust in the power of Christian love and forgiveness. Was she not a sinner in need of salvation? Had she not fallen short of the great ideal, but was trying to make up for her failings none the less? Every night she prayed that she would see her son again, and know he was well in this world, feel his forgiveness in her heart and find peace at last.

Should it be taking this long? Guy paced around the porch waiting for the cries of a newborn baby. Rose was well attended by the local women, the birth having come earlier than expected, and he feared no one would believe they had not even kissed until the night before the wedding.

He had been so cautious not to offend the family until Rose had dragged him into the garden and set upon him. ‘Don’t you want to touch me?’ she had cried. ‘Am I that plain?’

How he had reassured her otherwise with kisses and apologies. He adored her tender kisses, so different from those frantic couplings in port bars after a long sea voyage with women interested only in the content of his wallet for their favours.

Their wedding night was everything he had hoped for, snuggled in their newly built annexe of bedrooms that he knew they were expected to fill to the brim one day. She had given herself to him in love and trust as he took her in his arms and peeled off each layer of pretty clothing, all hand sewn and embellished with fine stitches. They were
not old Amish, who wore only plain colours. Mennonites wore brighter garments in fabrics with simple spots and checks, and some even wore worldly outfits, much to the disapproval of the older generation, who frowned on the purchase of tractors and engines and anything that was too modern. Guy didn’t mind either way, being too new a member to make any comment. Rose could have worn a flour sack and he would still have thought she looked beautiful.

She had opened herself to him that first time with eagerness and good humour, laughing and teasing his tentative moves. ‘I’m not an egg…I won’t crack!’ she had said, pulling him towards her. ‘We are married and everything is permitted!’

Now it seemed hours and hours before Miriam rushed down the stairs to put a precious bundle in his arms. ‘You have a son, Charles,’ she beamed. ‘A beautiful son, praise the Lord!’

‘Can I go and see her now?’ Guy made for the stairs.

‘No, not yet. She’s not finished yet. We think there’s another one on the way, so she mustn’t be disturbed.’

‘Is she…?’ he hardly dare speak at this news.

‘She will be fine.’

His son was swaddled in sheets and a pretty patchwork quilt, his eyes peering up at Guy’s face, trying to focus. This is my own flesh and blood, made from our bodies, Guy thought, and he felt such a surge of pride and love and tenderness. This tiny mite made him want to cry—and to think there would be two of them. His heart was bursting: another set of twins. Was this his legacy to the Yoders? Double trouble? He was still smiling when Miriam came downstairs, silent and calm as always, but her face was tired.

‘You can come now. Rose needs you,’ she said, taking the new baby from him, and he tore up the stairs, two at a time, sensing something was wrong. Rose was in trouble. He flung open the door to see her holding the baby. But she didn’t smile and her wide eyes held such sadness.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

She held out the bundle, the tiniest of bundles. Inside was a little wax doll, perfect, but with no life in its body.

‘He was too small. He couldn’t take his first breath. He’s perfect, but not ours,’ she cried. ‘I lost him…I was too small to carry them both,’ she wept.

The women melted away to leave them to grieve alone.

Guy held the baby and cried. What could he say to comfort her?

‘We have a son. We mustn’t be greedy. One will be enough for me. Let’s give this little one a name and christen him right here.’

Rose shook her head. ‘We don’t christen babies. Baptism is for those old enough to make their own choice. He belongs to God now.’

‘But he must have a name,’ Guy insisted. ‘He’ll always be a part of us and little Charlie must know he had a twin brother. I had one too but he was lost in the war.’ To his surprise he found himself sobbing, ‘He left one morning. I never said goodbye, and he was killed instead of me, Rose.’

‘You wait until now to tell me all this? You must have such sadness in your heart. What was his name?’

‘Angus…Gus.’

‘Then we shall name this little one after him, little Gus. He’s so perfect, isn’t he?’

‘How can you stay so calm?’ Guy cried.

‘I’ve been spared my first-born and my own life too, so
there’ll be others. The Lord chooses who He takes and when. It’s pointless arguing with what we cannot change.’ With brimming eyes she looked down at the blanket.

However long he lived Guy knew he would never have such an unquestioning faith or such serenity. Her acceptance shamed him but he reasoned she’d been born to such a way of belief and now it repaid her in times of trouble.

Miriam brought the screaming infant back into the room for his first feed. ‘Shall I take the other one away?’ she whispered.

‘No, Charles will see to little Gus. He’ll find him a little place to rest.’

Guy left them to women’s business, taking Gus to show Izaak, who sighed and pointed out a pretty spot on the slope of the hill set apart. ‘We’ll put him in there and deep…make a bench to remind us. Come on, I’ll give you a hand. It’s been a long day.’