The Penny Bangle (39 page)

This evening, he was courtesy itself, chatting pleasantly to Lily, asking if she’d like roast or mashed or both, deliberately not noticing when she slipped her false teeth out and hid them in her handkerchief, then mumbled up her food.

‘That Robert lad of yours, he’s very nice,’ Lily observed, as she and Cassie walked along the cliff path, one warm evening soon after they’d arrived.

‘He’s not
my
Robert, Granny,’ Cassie said.

‘Go on, my girl,’ said Lily ‘I’ve seen the way he looks at you. If he’s not your Robert, then I’m the Queen of Sheba. It’s a crying shame he’s not a Catholic.’

‘If I did get married – I’m not saying I will, but if I did – would it really matter if my husband wasn’t Catholic?’

‘Well, of course, it wouldn’t be what I’d want for you, our Cass,’ said Lily gravely. ‘But if you brought the children up as Catholics, you’d be doing your duty, and I’m sure Our Lord would understand.’

Lily shrugged her bony little shoulders. ‘If your husband loved you as he should, you might persuade him to become a Catholic, too. Father Riley says it’s beautiful, how the grace of God can work on even the most obstinate of minds.

‘He told me once knew this nice young couple, they lived in Solihull. He was Catholic, but she was a Methodist. Or she was a Baptist. Or something very odd in any case. But she – ’

Cassie let her granny ramble on, quoting Father Riley, the fountain of all wisdom. ‘There are some steps just here,’ she said, a few yards further on. ‘Do you want to go down to the beach?’

The land girls had gone home, and Rose had taken on two local boys who had just been demobbed. They lived at home in Charton, so Cassie’s fears the cottage might be somewhat overcrowded, and Lily might be overawed and frightened by a mob of strangers, were unrealised.

Lily liked her bedroom, but thought the cottage as a whole could do with a good scrub. There was lots of dust, the skirting boards were scuffed, and the brass could do with polishing.

Cassie could almost see her fingers twitching for her buckets, mops and brooms and dusters. She couldn’t help but click her tongue in disapproval every time she walked across the somewhat less than spotless kitchen floor.

After they’d all had supper one evening, Robert asked Cassie and Lily if they’d like to take a stroll.

‘I wouldn’t, son,’ said Lily. ‘Now I’ve got me feet up on the hearth here, and I’ve got me cup of tea, I’m settled for the evening. But you can take our Cass here for a little skip about.’

‘Yes, go on, you two. Off you skip,’ smiled Rose. ‘Then Mrs Taylor and I can have a little chat. She’s promised me she’ll show me how to knit.’

‘You don’t know how to knit, Rose?’ Cassie couldn’t believe Rose couldn’t knit. She might just as well have said she didn’t know how to breathe.

‘Do you know, I never had to learn.’ Then Rose winked at Cassie, and Cassie could have almost sworn she’d seen a little twinkle in her eye. ‘But it’s a useful skill, and one I feel I should acquire. I might need it one day, don’t you think?’

Robert and Cassie walked along the path that wound around the cliffs towards the headland, and then dropped down towards the shingle beach.

‘Daisy’s project, it’s all going ahead,’ he said, after they’d been walking for a while in total silence.

‘You mean to have your mum’s old house patched up, so she can offer holidays to kids from city slums?’ Cassie shrugged. ‘Yes, we talked about it lots of times.’

‘Daisy told me.’ Robert held out his hand to help her climb over a stile. ‘We’ll start with summer holidays,’ he continued, ‘probably for kids from Birmingham and the East End. When we’ve got proper heating, though, we’re going to use the house all the year round. We’ll have adventure holidays, we’ll teach the children water sports, we’ll take them out canoeing – ’

‘What will you do for money?’

‘Daisy’s got her film and theatre friends involved, and I believe her mother in America is going to chip in, too.’

‘How do you fit in?’ asked Cassie.

‘I’ll be at college in Dorchester in term-time,’ Robert said. ‘But at weekends and in school holidays, I’ll be here in Charton.’

‘You’ll be the pied piper, will you?’ Cassie laughed at him, but not unkindly. ‘I can see you now, Rob, running down the beach, with a load of scruffy kids in tow.’

‘I was wondering if you’d like a job here.’ Robert crossed his fingers. ‘Fran is very keen to be involved. I thought you two could run the place between you.’

‘What about her Simon, are they going to get married?’

‘I don’t know, but Frances says he wants to live in Dorset. He’s going to leave the army, and he wants to start a market garden.’ Robert turned to Cassie. ‘You like Dorset, too.’

‘I do.’

‘Cassie, are you going to marry me?’

‘I – Robert, there’s a problem, quite a big one.’

‘What?’ asked Robert, thinking that if Cassie loved him, there could be no problem which they couldn’t solve.

‘You’re not a Catholic. I’m not insisting you convert, but if we have some children, my granny will expect us to bring them up as Catholics.’

‘The children can be Roman Catholics, Buddhists, anything your granny fancies, if you’ll marry me.’

‘Rob, you really mean it?’

‘You asked me that before, in Alexandria.’ Robert took her in his arms and kissed her on the lips. ‘Cass, of course I mean it!’

‘Then, as I said in Alexandria – I’d love to marry you.’

After Lily had gone back to Smethwick, Robert took Cassie to see inside the empty house.

He opened the front door with an enormous iron key. They went into the musty, dim interior, which smelled of rot and damp. They stood in the vast entrance hall. Then, suddenly, the summer sun poured through the great stained window on the staircase, and patterned everything with blue and gold.

‘Be very careful,’ Robert warned. ‘Daisy’s had surveyors in and basically the house is fairly sound, but the woodwork’s got a bit of beetle, and some of it will have to be replaced.’

‘It all needs redecorating, too,’ said Cassie grimly. The hall was painted institutional green up to the dado rails, then sickly cream above. But higher up, in places where the painters couldn’t reach, Cassie could see old paper coming loose, and peeling away from damp-stained, mildewed walls.

‘It all needs stripping back,’ said Robert. ‘All this horrible green paint, put straight on top of paper, it’s pulling all the paper off the walls. Poor Mum, she’ll have a fit when she sees this.’

‘Oh, hasn’t she been inside yet?’ Cassie asked him.

‘No,’ said Robert. ‘I don’t think she can bear to come and see the state it’s in – at least not yet.’

‘But it’s still a lovely house.’ Cassie gazed all round the hall, taking in the gracious sweep of the great, curving staircase, looking up at the empty space above. ‘That bloke who left it to your mother – he was the one who let it get like this?’

‘Yes, apparently.’ Robert shrugged. ‘Well, he did want to marry Mum, but she preferred my father. So this was his revenge.’

‘Some people, eh?’ said Cassie, and she shook her head. ‘Come on then, Rob, let’s go upstairs.’

‘All right, but watch the floorboards. Some of them might be rotten, and I don’t want you to break your ankle, or your neck.’

They walked around the bedrooms, now decrepit, stained and marked with childish scrawls, deliberately vandalised. The wrecks of iron bedsteads stood around like gibbets, casting shadows on the dirty walls.

‘We won’t have any dormitories or classrooms,’ Robert said. He raised a rotting blind to let some noontime sunshine in. ‘We won’t have echoing dining rooms with lino on the floors, like in some Victorian orphanage.’

‘What are you having, then?’

‘Daisy wants the Minster to be a home from home. So the children will have proper bedrooms.’

‘Rob, you must remember that the kids who’ll come here won’t be used to gracious living,’ Cassie told him. ‘They won’t have pyjamas, they’ll have nits, they’ll have awful table manners, and they’ll wet their beds.’

‘We’ll cope, I’m sure,’ said Robert. ‘You and Frances and a few more women from the village, you’ll soon sort them out.’

As they walked downstairs again, Cassie saw the portrait. It was hanging high up on the wall, well out of reach of sticky, dirty or malicious fingers.

It was of a woman in Elizabethan dress, her starched white ruff discoloured by mildew, her complexion dimmed by dust and grime. But the likeness was remarkable.

‘Look, Rob – it’s your mother!’ Cassie turned to Robert. ‘Rose, when she was young.’

‘Yes, it looks a bit like Mum,’ said Robert. ‘But although she’s getting on a bit, she’s not that old! I think it must be an ancestor.’

‘Fancy having ancestors,’ said Cassie.

‘Everyone has ancestors,’ said Robert.

‘You know what I mean.’ Cassie smiled at Robert ‘I’m so glad your mother’s got her house back.’

‘So am I.’ Robert gazed round the desolation. ‘But it’s going to be a long, hard slog, to put it straight again.’

‘You’re used to long, hard slogs.’

‘I am.’ Robert looked at Cassie, suddenly grave. ‘Cass, I’ll work day and night to get this whole thing up and running, to make it a success.’

‘We’ll do it together, Robert,’ Cassie told him firmly. ‘I love your mum, you know. If I could have a mother, I’d have one like Rose.’

Cassie had been afraid he’d dig his heels in, but Robert didn’t argue when she said they ought to marry in St Saviour’s church in Birmingham.

Lily Taylor moaned and fretted, muttered it was going to be an awful hole and corner job, which of course it always was when one of the couple wasn’t Catholic.

She grumbled, sighed and added she was praying nightly for Robert to receive the gift of grace. She’d got a little booklet she was going to send to him, and she’d got some cards –

‘You leave Rob alone,’ said Cassie sternly.

‘Father Riley said to me, if Robert wants instruction – ’

‘Robert’s capable of asking for it, in his own good time.’ Cassie gave her grandmother a hug. ‘You mustn’t worry, Granny – everything will be all right.’

Lily didn’t comment. But she’d got that look upon her face, the one she’d had when she had first decided Cassie should become a land girl.

Cassie braced herself for months or even years of slow attrition, as Lily and Father Riley did their best to talk her husband round.

Epilogue

January 1948

Robert was right, it was a long, hard slog.

But it was worth it, for the Minster proved to be the perfect place for Daisy’s vision to become reality.

Cassie and Frances worked together to create the perfect holiday home for city children from all over the country. They never stopped. Once they’d got the heating sorted out, the Minster welcomed children and their teachers all year round.

‘You mustn’t work so hard,’ said Robert, looking up from his marking one cold evening. ‘You should be resting nowadays, sitting with your feet up, knitting shawls.’

‘Cassie doesn’t know how to rest,’ smiled Rose.

‘I’m not overdoing it, I promise,’ Cassie told them. ‘If I have any problems – if I feel tired or ill – I’ll have a holiday from the Minster and rest up.’

The baby was a dark-haired, dark-eyed girl, who was hardly visible amidst the lace and shawls and frills in which Lily insisted baby girls should all be wrapped when they were christened.

Maybe it was just as well the child was such a bundle, Cassie thought. The church was freezing, so she was glad of Daisy’s present of a fur-lined coat, under which she wore her smart blue costume.

‘You look lovely, darling,’ Daisy said, in the ringing tones which filled whole auditoria with ease. ‘It didn’t take you long to get your figure back, I see.’

Cassie glanced at Lily, who was screwing up her face.

Daisy didn’t look anything like an actress. She was wearing classic, smart dark clothes and wasn’t painted up. But Lily was clearly thinking that this woman did not know how to behave inside a Catholic church.