Winter Roses (6 page)

‘Good,’ Caroline said immediately. ‘Here be oysters,’ and all humming the chorus from the show, they turned their backs on the war. Their confidence worked, for no Zeps came that night.

The next day Felicia and Tilly elected to go down to Ashden immediately, George and Phoebe went off on their own, and Caroline decided to take a walk with Penelope in Kensington Gardens, of which she had always been fond. Her plans, however, were disrupted when Isabel arrived, just as she was setting out. Unfortunately Robert was not with her, and this was an Isabel she recognised of old.

‘Oh, Caroline, it’s terrible.’ She flung herself into her sister’s arms.

‘What is, Isabel? Robert? Bad news?’ She was instantly sympathetic, for something terrible must have happened to cause this outburst on Robert’s short leave.

‘No,’ she sobbed. ‘
Me
.’

Of course.

‘Oh, Caroline,’ Isabel wept on, ‘you were right after all. Robert says I’ve got to go to East Grinstead. We had the most frightful row this morning. I’ve come straight here, I knew you’d understand.’

‘You can’t leave poor Robert alone on his leave, Isabel, whatever’s happened.’ Caroline was horrified.

‘You don’t understand. He says there’s no alternative. The Army are taking over The Towers and Hop House from the end of hop-picking. That means in less than a
month
. Oh, Caroline, I shall die, I know I shall.’

Caroline tried to comfort her, even while battling with her own mixed reactions to this news. ‘East Grinstead isn’t so far away. We can travel to see you by train, and you can come to see us.’

‘It’s the end of the earth,’ Isabel moaned. ‘And how can I be expected to live with Edith and William? That’s another thing. I’m supposed to call them Mother and Father. I won’t. They’re not my father and mother, and Robert is being perfectly beastly about the whole thing.’

‘Why? He’s not usually so dogmatic.’

‘He says he doesn’t want me living on my own again. You don’t think – oh, Caroline, last year, you didn’t say anything to him about that misunderstanding over Reggie and me?’

Caroline blenched. ‘No. It’s hardly something I’d boast about, is it?’

‘I suppose not.’

Dear Isabel. Her tactlessness restored Caroline’s good humour. ‘What do you want to do if you don’t go to
East Grinstead? They can’t press-gang you. There’s no conscription for women.’

‘Don’t joke. It’s not funny. I want to come home, but I can’t while that awful woman is there.’

‘Grandmother?’

‘No, Lizzie Dibble, the trollop,’ Isabel said viciously.

‘She’s a nice girl. I like her. Rough and ready, but—’

‘I can’t stand her and I won’t live in the same house with her.’

‘Then don’t come.’ Caroline’s patience snapped. It was beginning to be obvious she had been right about Isabel and Frank Eliot. And Robert wasn’t slow-witted either.

‘I’m not being turned out of my home by Lizzie Dibble,’ Isabel shouted.

‘What
do
you want then? For heaven’s sake, make your mind up.’

‘Oh, Caroline.’ Isabel’s famous piteous look appeared. ‘I just want everything to be all right again.’

This time Caroline failed to sympathise. Didn’t she herself long for everything to be all right again? If only it could be, if only you could crawl back through time to safety. Well, you couldn’t. You had to fight your way through to the next safety point. If you were Isabel though, she conceded, it was hard.

‘Robert would let you come back to the Rectory,’ she soothed, ‘and Lizzie will be gone soon. You’ll see.’

Isabel shook her head miserably. ‘He won’t. I’ve already asked him.’

‘Why is Robert being so stubborn? Anyway, although it would upset him, he couldn’t prevent it.’

‘Yes, he could. He says he’ll stop my allowance.’

Caroline bit back a laugh. ‘Yes, I see that would be a problem,’ she tried to say seriously. ‘I suppose you’re not having a baby, by any chance? That would be reason enough for you to come home.’

‘A baby? In this war? No, thank you. He did say,’ this came out a trifle unwillingly, ‘that if I were working seriously for the war effort like you and Phoebe, that would be different. But he knows I’m not strong enough to work on the land, even if I wanted to.’

Isabel was as strong as a horse, in Caroline’s view, for all her fragile fair looks. ‘It seems vindictive, even for our William, to walk away from Ashden quite so offhandedly,’ she commented. ‘Good agricultural land going to waste; cinema closing because it hasn’t got a manager, dragging you away. I suppose,’ Caroline added fairly, ‘he can’t feel all that well disposed towards the village, what with Aunt Tilly humiliating him and then Father getting the better of him – what’s the matter?’ She suddenly realised Isabel was looking distinctly more cheerful.

‘Nothing. I’ve just had an idea, that’s all. Now, what were you saying?’

‘Don’t bother,’ Caroline said resignedly. ‘I doubt if it was important.’

‘Good,’ said Isabel absent-mindedly.

Ashden Station meant home and Caroline felt a rush of affection for the old red-brick building, although like the Rectory, its beauty was in the eye of the beholder.

As she strolled down Station Road, autumn was sharply evident, after the damp weather. The hedgerows were full of blackberries, and the air of the smells of September. She loved this month, she loved the mellow colour of its sun, and the sense of peace about the countryside before it settled down to winter. Winter had already come to the war. Absent now were the first brave words about the success of the Great Somme Offensive, there was nothing but news of reverses and ever longer casualty lists, which could not be hidden by stories of the bravery of its warriors. Everyone knew how brave they were but it didn’t stop them getting slaughtered by the German machine guns, and it didn’t stop them dying in their thousands, driven on route marches like those by their Arab captors after the Siege of Kut, without food, boots or sanitation.

Sometimes, Father had said in his sermon last Sunday after the Zep had been shot down, it took only one small event to turn the tide. Certainly the changed mood had been obvious from listening to people talking, on her truncated walk in Kensington Gardens this afternoon.

The front door of the Rectory opened as if by magic the moment she arrived. Percy had seen her coming, but it was Mrs Dibble who pushed him aside to break the news.

‘My Lizzie’s just had a fine baby boy.’ She looked as proud as if she’d produced it herself.

Margaret decided she could do with a nice cup of tea herself, after taking Lizzie one. She’d forgotten how exhausting it could be running up and down stairs all the time, although
she’d done it not so long ago for Agnes. If it wasn’t for Myrtle and Agnes, she couldn’t cope, and that was the truth of it, and goodness knows how long Myrtle would stay once the baby had gone. No stamina these girls. She’d only been here three years.

Agnes came into the kitchen after lighting the morning-room fire, for it was on the chilly side for September. ‘How’s Lizzie, Mrs Dibble?’

Margaret sniffed. ‘Says she’s going to get up tomorrow. After two days. Not if I have anything to do with it.’

‘It might not do any harm, Mrs D. Better than staying in bed all day fretting—’

‘Fretting?’ Margaret picked up sharply.

‘About what she’s going to do. Hop Cottage is going to the Army along with the rest of the estate. That Swinford-Browne wrote to tell her. Fancy giving her less than a month to clear the place when she’s just had a baby.’

‘She’ll have to go back to Hartfield where she came from,’ Margaret said dismally. She’d expected it, but now it had happened it hit her all over again.

‘She can’t do that.’ Agnes looked worried. ‘They know she’s Mrs Stein there, and they know Rudolf. If she goes back with a baby, everyone will know exactly what the situation is. People aren’t kind, as you know, Mrs Dibble.’

Margaret was uncomfortably aware there was a time when she hadn’t been kind, and though Agnes seemed to have forgotten it, she hadn’t. ‘She might want to stay here.’

‘Lizzie isn’t cut out for housework,’ replied Agnes gently. ‘Besides, there’s all Mr Eliot’s possessions to think of.’

Margaret fastened on the latter problem. ‘He can come home. Compassionate leave they call it.’

‘I doubt it. He’s out east, Lizzie says. And even if he does, Lizzie would still need a home. I suppose,’ Agnes hesitated, ‘if I left I could find another position. Lady Hunney wants someone and—’

Margaret interrupted her. ‘That’s good of you, Agnes, but you’re right. Even then Lizzie wouldn’t stay. There’s no need to upset yourself too.’

‘No, she’s an outside girl,’ Agnes agreed, looking much relieved.

‘She can’t live outside. She’s not a gypsy.’ Margaret returned to fighting form.

‘You know what I mean. I wonder now—’

But the bell rang then, so she never did hear what Agnes had been going to say. It was her ladyship’s bell. Unusual. It was Miss Lewis’s opinion that Lady Buckford had been quiet recently only because she was thinking how to get her own back. So what was up now? It was against the rules for her to ring for the Rectory staff instead of her own.

‘Who’s going, Agnes, you or Myrtle?’

‘I’ll go. It’s not fair on Myrtle.’

‘No, I will,’ Margaret suddenly decided. She felt in the mood for battle. ‘You serve luncheon to the family.’

Lady Buckford, ensconced in the wing armchair of her sitting room, registered no surprise. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Dibble. I am glad to see you, and not Agnes.’

This was a turnabout, and no mistake, and Margaret proposed to treat it very cautiously indeed. ‘Thank you, madam.’ She made her voice as wooden as a forest oak.

‘I am concerned that the Rectory is not providing the lead it should to the village in times of warfare.’

She knew it. There was trouble coming, though this sounded as if it were heading for Mrs Lilley and the Rector, not her. Her blood began to boil nicely on their behalf, but she managed to trap it behind tightly closed lips.

‘There is, as you must be aware, a Voluntary Ration Campaign, and the government warns of more shortages to come,’ her ladyship graciously informed her, as though she never read a newspaper.

The tide of trouble was turning in her direction now, and Margaret waited with foreboding.

‘I am constantly told by Mrs Lilley,’ Lady Buckford continued, as though her daughter-in-law were in some distant land, ‘how well you manage on a limited budget in the kitchen. Indeed, I see it for myself.’

Worse and worse. Flattery? Beware the snake that comes with forked tongue.

‘I therefore propose to organise cookery demonstrations and talks in the Rectory in order to instruct the village women in how to meet a budget.’

Margaret didn’t take it in at first, nor at second, neither. Then she appreciated the full implications of Lady Buckford’s preposterous suggestion. Margaret’s mind rarely boggled, but it boggled now. She wanted to shout that village women had been managing their budgets for hundreds of years without any help from her ladyship, but with those black gimlet eyes staring at her the words wouldn’t come. Instead: ‘Who’s going to do the cooking?’ the Sussex oak in her asked. ‘You, madam?’

‘Naturally not. I assumed that you would wish to retain the prerogative of cooking in your own kitchen, and to undertake the task for patriotic reasons.’

‘In
my
kitchen?’ Margaret was felled at a stroke, having overlooked the obvious. ‘I couldn’t do that, madam, I’ve enough to do as it is.’

‘Yes, I understand – and indeed hear – that your new grandson is in the house. If you feel the work is too much for you, then you must say so.’

This time the implication did not escape her. Margaret, her mind totally confused, took refuge in the only defence left to her, the one that never let her down. ‘I’ll have to speak to the mistress, madam.’

Lady Buckford smiled. ‘Of course. However, my son can hardly object, since it is in our nation’s interests, and therefore his wife must agree too. Even the dear Queen is making sacrifices in her kitchens. Where she leads, we must follow.’

Margaret spent the rest of the afternoon in a daze, waiting to see Mrs Lilley who had been closeted in the Rector’s study ever since she came in half an hour ago. When Agnes came back from her afternoon off, looking very pleased with herself, she was still waiting.

‘I think I’ve solved Lizzie’s problem, Mrs Dibble.’

‘Problem?’ For once her mind was not on her family troubles.

‘Where to live,’ Agnes explained, surprised. ‘Farmer Lake’s. He has a cottage free on the farm.’ She didn’t remind Mrs Dibble it belonged to a lad who had been reported missing at Loos a year ago and was now assumed dead. ‘If
Lizzie likes to help out on the farm when she’s able, she can have it, and Mrs Lake will look after the baby.’

‘Look after baby Frank?
My
grandson?’

‘It’s for the best,’ Agnes pointed out. ‘You haven’t the time. And one child,’ she added bravely, ‘is enough in the Rectory permanently. I could still go, if you prefer, and take Elizabeth Agnes—’

‘No,’ Margaret was suddenly quite sure. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you, Agnes, and that’s a fact.’

Agnes looked gratified. ‘Thank you, Mrs Dibble. Shall I tell Lizzie about it, then? You look rather tired.’

‘No, I’ll—’ Margaret changed her mind. ‘Yes, please, Agnes, if you’d be so kind.’

For the first time in her twenty and more years at the Rectory, she had to admit she couldn’t manage everything, and she listened to Agnes’s footsteps marching up the servants’ stairs like the knell of destiny, proclaiming the end of her invincibility. ‘Nonsense,’ she told herself, taking a few gulps of tea. ‘Nonsense.’ It didn’t work its usual magic, so she tried a burst of song since at the moment Our Lord seemed far away: ‘Fight the good fight …’

That didn’t work either. Then she heard Miss Caroline’s voice in the hall, laughing at something or someone. Miss Caroline –
she
would cheer her up, if she could think of an excuse to beard her. It occurred to her she could tell her about Farmer Lake, since it would affect her rotas for agricultural work.