Winter Roses (8 page)

‘Indeed, madam.’ Margaret gauged her reaction to this news, in the midst of all her other problems, and decided it was the least of them. Mrs Isabel was here most of the time anyway, so formally moving back in might be easier all round. She wasn’t going to admit this right away, however. ‘And Mr Robert?’

‘When he’s on leave, of course, he is welcome here. I must admit I feel rather worried about it, since Mr Robert wants her to go with his parents. However, my daughter tells me she is getting a job that will keep her in Ashden.’

‘A
job
?’ Margaret was so surprised, she didn’t guard her voice like she usually did.

Luckily Mrs Lilley laughed. ‘Apparently so. She wouldn’t say what it was though.’

The day Mrs Isabel turned her hand to hard work, she’d eat her hat, Margaret reflected when Mrs Lilley had gone. Idleness is the rust of the mind, so her mother used to say and if so, Mrs Isabel was very rusty indeed. Then she returned to her own problems before getting the servants’ dinner ready. Her thinking cap was going to have to work hard, if Lady Buckford was to be checkmated, but the Lord today seemed to have left Margaret Dibble to her own devices, since He wasn’t rushing to come up with ideas for her.

He continued to take His time for the next week, at the end of which Lizzie insisted on moving into her new cottage. Without the delights of baby Frank, and once she had done all that could be done to see Lizzie was ‘provided for’ – in other words, that she wouldn’t starve for lack of a full larder – Margaret decided to face the problem of Lady Buckford. She discovered that events had taken a surprising turn. The Lord might be intervening on her behalf after all.

The day after the memorial service for Mr Reggie in St Nicholas, Lady Buckford had walked over to the Dower House, without even demanding the use of Dr Marden’s pony and trap. She had paid a visit to Lady Hunney. No one knew what had passed between the two women, but Margaret gathered it was generally felt in the Rectory that the feud was at least temporarily at an end. Perhaps that might mean an end to this nonsense of cookery lessons. On the other hand it might not, for her ladyship wouldn’t be satisfied without meddling in something, and the
newspapers were increasingly full of sombre warnings about worsening food shortages, what with all the ships being sunk. There was even talk of the need for a Food Controller, and everyone knew what that meant. Rations of some sort or soaring prices or both. It was clear she needed to lay in her stores before it was too late. Unpatriotic, Mrs Lilley would say; but then, what she didn’t know about couldn’t worry her.

Caroline’s numbness gradually cleared leaving sharp pain in its wake. Even the memorial service had seemed to be about some stranger, not about the Reggie she had loved. Late that evening, she and Father had gone to the oak tree on Bankside, on one side of which the initials of all those who had fallen in the war were carved, and on the other those that had volunteered before conscription. Reggie’s name – and those of many others – was now on both sides. She had expected to carve it quietly in the twilight of the autumn evening, but people had quickly gathered, and by the time it was finished a large crowd was silently watching them. One of them had been Lady Hunney.

In the Rectory her mother watched her anxiously, but it was easy to avoid notice at the moment, for Isabel was in the process of moving her personal possessions from Hop House and packing Robert’s for East Grinstead, and continually coming and going. Her sister still had not expanded on her original statement that she had a job in Ashden and, egged on by her mother, Caroline decided to tackle her.

‘What’s all this about your getting a job, Isabel? Why haven’t you told us about it?’

‘I’ve been busy, that’s all.’ Isabel put on her airy look. So she was biding her time to tell them something they might not approve of.

Everyone had their own interpretation of the word busy, and packing up one small house with the help of the entire staff of The Towers did not, in Caroline’s opinion, compare with getting in the harvest. The latter was taking all her own time at the moment, and she was grateful, because while she was arguing with farmers over pay, sorting out hop-pickers’ disputes, and trying to plan for winter ploughing, she could not be aching for Reggie.

‘Come on, Isabel, what
is
this job?’

Isabel gave in. ‘Promise you won’t tell Father before I’ve actually started, but I’m going to manage the cinema.’

‘
What?
The Gothic Horror? You can’t mean it.
You?
’ Caroline burst into laughter, regardless of the offended expression on Isabel’s face.

‘I believe it to be a most worthwhile means of fighting the war,’ Isabel announced loftily.

‘So that you don’t have to go to East Grinstead?’

‘Not at all. I see it as my duty to provide a means of escape for those tortured by war and its problems.’

If there was one thing worse than Isabel in tears, it was Isabel being pretentious. Isabel had rehearsed these laudable opinions, Caroline suspected, in order to try them out on her before breaking the news to Father. True, he had come to accept the existence of the picture palace, since although there was still virulent discussion in the newspapers as
to cinema’s disastrous effect on the morals of the young, Father had judged by results. Apart from increased noise on Bankside at night and custom in the Norville Arms, the morals of Ashden did not seem to have deteriorated – or if they had, the change could not be attributed to the cinema. Ruth Horner, who showed patrons to their seats, wielded her torch very efficiently. Nevertheless, that didn’t mean Father was going to approve of his daughter working there.

‘How will you cope? You’re useless at figures and know nothing about business,’ Caroline asked with genuine interest.

‘Thank you for your confidence in me,’ Isabel retorted crossly. ‘I don’t remember ever asking you how you manage to drum up women for your rotas, with your noticeable lack of patience.’ Caroline blushed. ‘Managing isn’t about adding up columns of figures anyway,’ Isabel added. ‘It’s about organising other people to do it.’

Now there she had a point, Caroline conceded. If anyone could persuade others into doing boring jobs for her, Isabel could.

‘I’m looking forward to it,’ Isabel continued defiantly. ‘I’ve already thought about which films I’ll choose. It’s had far too many gangster and Red Indian films up to now; we want something for the older folk to draw them in. I’ll have Father sitting there roaring his head off with laughter before too long.’

‘I’ll believe that when I see it. How on earth did you persuade our William to let you do it?’

‘I told him what I’ve told you.’ Large innocent eyes held Caroline’s. ‘It’s a service to the village, it takes people’s
minds off war, and keeps Ashden on the map – and the name of Swinford-Browne.’

‘Now tell me the
real
reason he agreed.’

Isabel gave a reluctant grin. ‘If you must know, I threatened to tell Edith all about Ruth Horner if he didn’t let me run the cinema.’

‘Isabel! Is that wise?’

‘It’s not really blackmail.’

‘It’s not the ethics that worry me. It’s trying it on William.’

‘I won.’ Isabel shrugged.

This round perhaps, thought Caroline anxiously. Isabel was all too apt to think a problem solved when it was merely resting. Edith was still, they believed, in blissful ignorance of the now commonly accepted fact that her husband was the father of Ruth Horner’s illegitimate baby. Somehow he must have managed to persuade his wife that any gossip was ill-founded, but if Isabel came out with the truth, Edith would believe it. She had a flattering notion that the Rectory bred only saints, who could never lie.

‘Do you know, I’m looking forward to this job.’ Isabel seemed slightly amazed at herself. ‘I’m even getting a small salary. That helped too, because Father-in-law saw a chance of paying me less than he would a man. He always responds to a bargain. I’m getting one pound a week.
And
Robert can hardly stop my allowance now, so I shall be quite well-off.’

The thought of Isabel demeaning herself in the service of the village was so captivating that Caroline was diverted for a while from grief, but once alone in her room again,
listening to George chatting excitedly to Phoebe on the stairs outside, it soon returned. How could life in the Rectory continue normally, when hers had so radically changed? Irrational guilt over Reggie’s death tore at her, and she had long talks with her father, hoping to find an answer. Though he provided consolation, he had gently pointed out that answers could come only from within herself. But how? She seemed incapable of thought, let alone decisions.

She had tried to talk to Phoebe, since she had suffered similarly. It had been nearly a year now since Harry Darling died and Phoebe never mentioned him. It took courage on Caroline’s part to raise the subject, for Phoebe seemed almost back to her old buoyant self, so much was she enjoying her job as postwoman.

‘Did you feel guilt over Harry’s death?’ she had asked her one evening when they found themselves alone in the drawing room.

‘Guilt?’ Phoebe fiddled with a loose button, pulling the thread until it came off in her hand. ‘No. I was angry. I still am. It just isn’t fair, young men having to die.’

Angry? Did she feel angry about Reggie? No. Reggie had volunteered like Harry, but he was years older, and trained for war. Harry had been a mere boy when he signed up.

‘But the closeness between you – did you
know
he had died, without being told?’

‘It was different. If you remember, I was with him in hospital. Look, Caroline, do you mind if we don’t talk about this? I can’t help; I wish I could, but no one can. Not really. You just have to live through it.’

Phoebe was right of course, but
that
didn’t help either. If only Felicia were here. She immersed herself in work, spending as much time as she could outside the Rectory. Her parents’ attention was not all centred on her, to her relief, for she was sharing it with George. Everyone was aware that in a little over two months George would be eighteen, and next week he was going solo to try for his ticket, his pilot’s licence.

‘What do you plan to do then, George?’ Caroline asked him.

‘Sign up for the RFC,’ he announced gleefully.

‘What about Father?’

‘He doesn’t want to join the RFC.’

She laughed at that. ‘Don’t be silly, George. You know what I mean. He might try to stop you.’

‘No. I’ll be eighteen in December, and that’s that. Even Father can’t stop me now.’ He suddenly looked anxious though. ‘It’s the chance of my life.’

‘That’s exactly what it is,’ Caroline pointed out. ‘If you went into the Army, as he wants, the war might be over by the time you’d trained.’

‘I’m sorry, Caroline. Reggie and all that. But chaps see things differently to girls. I can fly a plane now, and I jolly well want to have my shot at the enemy. Come on, Caroline, you know there’s no talking me out of it.’

‘I’m not sure I want to.’

He looked taken aback. ‘You’re changing your tune quickly.’

‘One does, with this war. We cheer a destroyed Zeppelin, the Germans cheer at the numbers they’ve mown down in
High Wood. They cheer Reggie’s death. Can you blame either side? No. Tell me, George, when you and Phoebe went to see the wreckage of that Zeppelin at Cuffley, did it change your determination to get into the RFC?’

‘You know it didn’t.’

‘Not even seeing the dead crew?’

‘They were inside the church.’ George hesitated. ‘I’ll tell you this, Caroline, and you won’t like it. The church was locked and there were police guards on the coffins in case the crowds broke the doors down to get at the corpses. Inside, the police were playing football with one of the helmets.

‘I know it’s not pretty,’ he continued, seeing her instant look of revulsion, ‘but if we want to come through this war we’ve got to blinker ourselves to everything save the need to win it.’

‘No matter what the cost?’

‘Yes.’ George thought for a moment. ‘Seeing that downed Zep did affect Phoebe though. She thought she was going to be cheering and dancing in triumph; the Zep crew’s lives for her blessed Harry. But she told me afterwards it wasn’t like that. It made her think of Harry all the more, in case someone had done that to his body. Interesting, isn’t it?’

It was. Only two years ago George and Phoebe were children, now they seemed to know their own minds more than she did, and moreover Phoebe could talk to George but not to her. Was that her fault too? Had she been so busy in her job and so bound up in her grief over Reggie, first with the broken engagement and now his death, that she had let her own family drift away from her? Caroline
made a further effort. ‘So what you’re saying is that there’s no escape from the war till it’s over?’

‘I suppose I am.’

No escape. Just as that Belgian captain had said in June. Was it enough that all Caroline’s energies were being used in her work in Ashden? Increasing submarine warfare and the poor wheat harvest in America were forcing the shilly-shallying Asquith government ever nearer to direct action in food production. By next year, agricultural labour would surely be nationally organised, and proud though she was of what she had achieved, it would soon be out of her hands. Once hop-picking was over, and the future of the gardens and the rest of the Swinford-Browne estate settled with the Army, her current responsibilities would be over, and she could leave the winter rotas to her mother to organise. She had at last come to a decision.

With the advent of October, at the traditional last night hop-picking party, which she managed to persuade Swinford-Browne to pay for (though with some difficulty), she had a sense of finality. It was evening, a time to say goodbye. Soon this land would in all likelihood hold hops no longer. Isabel had moved into the Rectory two days ago, Lizzie was safely installed in Farmer Lake’s cottage. The Swinford-Brownes, having ostentatiously hired a removal carrier not from Ashden, but from East Grinstead, had paid a stiff and formal visit to the Rectory one evening to celebrate their parting (though that wasn’t the word used in front of them). Everything was ending. Everything was beginning.