The Winter Baby

by Sheila Newberry

  However, Jessie and Daisy had been hoarding sugar and tea for months, and they had been careful not to waste food. There was no turkey or goose this Christmas, but a brace of pheasants appeared, though Jessie wasn’t revealing where these came from. Carrots were plentiful and swelled the Christmas puddings and cake, but flour was a precious commodity nowadays.

  There were fewer bottles of elderflower wine and cordial due to the sugar shortage, but there had been a bumper crop of apples, plums and blackberries, which they had preserved by bottling the fruit and making jam and pickles, while Mrs Amos had tried her hand at sloe gin for the first time.

  When all the presents had been opened, mostly home-made this year, and the cards put up on every available shelf, Dennis moved two large tables into place. One was for the eight children: Heather, Kitty, Jimmy, Wilf, Bridget and the twins, plus the youngest O’Brien, Tom, now three years old; the other for the grown-ups: Jessie, Doc, Danny, Kathleen, Daisy, Mrs Amos and her companion Lily, Bridie, Olga and Dennis. Kitty counted them all up – eighteen in all! She and Bridget had fashioned paper hats from a pile of Daily Mirrors, and Heather and Wilf had made a large Christmas cracker as a table decoration.

  Kathleen sat next to Danny; he smiled at her and she blushed, thinking of the intimacy of the night before. Jessie, observing them, gave a little sigh.

  Danny was recalling the day when he had seen Kathleen lying in the snow, and how he had felt when Heather was born. He bit his lip; that first Christmas Day he had upset Marion, and despite the episode in the hayloft afterwards, when he was, he realised now, tricked into marrying her, he loved her too. Marion never believed me when I told her that, he thought sadly. Sam was the lucky one, and Kathleen was right to marry him – can we be as happy in time as they were then?

  ‘Danny, you’re supposed to be passing the plates along the table,’ Kathleen reminded him.

  ‘Sorry, I was remembering past Christmases,’ he said.

  *

  It was midnight again before anyone got to bed.

  ‘I wonder what the new year will bring,’ Kathleen said, yawning.

  ‘Peace, I hope,’ Danny said. The candle was snuffed; he waited for a few moments, while she snuggled up to him. ‘Kathleen?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘Will you marry me when it’s possible?’

  Kathleen cried out, careless of being overheard. ‘I have prayed every night that you would ask me that!’ She flung her arms round him and hugged him tight. ‘Of course I will! I love you, Danny. I will never forget you lifting me out of the snow that day; when I looked up at you as you carried me in your strong arms, I wondered if you were an angel – and I now realise that was the moment I fell I love with you. It wasn’t the right time, I know, and later . . . well, Sam and I came together, and that was a real love story. It’s sad that it wasn’t like that for you and Marion.’

  Danny’s mind filled with thoughts of his brother and his wife; of loved ones lost.

  ‘Danny, please don’t feel guilty about not . . . well, waiting, you know. Sam wanted us to be together if he didn’t come home. You told me that he asked you to look after me if anything happened to him, didn’t you? We will be one big family with our children. We won’t forget Sam or Marion ever.’

  Danny nodded, too choked with emotion to speak.

  ‘And when we have our honeymoon,’ Kathleen continued, ‘will you take me home?’

  ‘To Ireland? I promise I will. Like the old song, eh, “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”. I know it’s what Sam wanted to do too.’ And with that, she kissed him again.

  Later, still encircled in his arms, Kathleen realised that he had fallen asleep. He’s happy now, she thought, and so am I. Life is good again.

  Epilogue

  In 1926, marriages between couples in Danny and Kathleen’s situation became possible. They wed the following spring.

  Doc had passed away in his sleep a year earlier; he had touched so many lives, and many people joined Jessie and her family at the service of thanksgiving. He was much missed.

  In 1921, Heather had married Dennis. They had been childhood sweethearts since she was fourteen; ‘Just like Danny and Marion,’ Jessie said fondly. Heather was eighteen, and the marriage took place in the Catholic church, where Dennis was also a member. They were now proud parents of two boys – Sam aged four, and Danny aged two. The little family lived in the Barn House, where Dennis made a good living from the wood. Heather sold a painting or two; she was aware she had inherited her artistic talent from her natural father, and told Kathleen, ‘It’s actually nice to be different.’ She was proud to be known as ‘The Winter Baby’, and to hear the now familiar story of how her mother had struggled along in the snow before her birth.

  Wilf was at university, studying ancient history; Jimmy was about to leave school and wanted to work with the horses; bubbly Kitty had a job in a London hotel as a receptionist, and had a queue of suitors. They all missed her at home. Danny was slowly building up the stables again with Kathleen, and Jessie and Daisy were still busy cooking in the kitchen.

  The Brickyard House was unoccupied, and would remain so. The O’Briens had returned to London after the Armistice in 1918 and were reunited with their elder daughters. Lily had passed away by then, so Mrs Amos went back to her friends at Home Farm. She was very proud of Wilf, nowadays referring to him as ‘my clever grandson at university’. She considered herself retired, though she still made the elderflower wine for Christmas. Olga was now teaching at a London art college, and as Jessie had anticipated, Min and Josh did not return to Kent.

  There were still piles of bricks in the courtyard, but the clay pits were no longer dug. It was the end of an era.

  A day after their quiet wedding, Kathleen and Danny were at sea. He was taking her back to Ireland, but she assured Jessie she would return to Home Farm.

  ‘It is my real home; you are my family, and always will be,’ she told her.

  They saw the farm where Kathleen had lived until she was seven, and to her delight, there were horses there again. She shared with Danny her memories of living in County Clare before she moved to Dublin with her mother and stepfather. She vowed that the one place she would never visit again was where she had been a victim of malicious ill-treatment.

  ‘I still don’t want to remember that time,’ she told Danny, and he understood.

  *

  Although Kathleen and Danny were now both over forty, with grown-up children and young grandchildren, there would be another winter baby nine months after their honeymoon in Ireland – a tiny daughter, dark-haired with blue eyes, named Clare, after the place where Kathleen had been born.

  Acknowledgements

  Ian Mitchell of Tatsfield history project, for information on the early twentieth century in the area.

  Jean Pearce Edwards, author of Little Jean’s War and other good books.

  Virginia Whitnell, artist/teacher, my daughter, for valuable information on potting!

  About the Author

  Sheila Newberry was born in Suffolk and spent a lot of time there both before and during the war. She wrote her first ‘book’ before she was ten – all sixty pages of it – in purple ink. Her family has certainly been her inspiration and she has been published most of her adult life. She spent forty years living in Kent with her husband John on a smallholding, and has nine children, twenty-two grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. They retired back to Suffolk where Sheila still lives today.

  Also by Sheila Newberry

  Angel’s Secret

  Bicycles and Blackberries

  The Canal Girl

  The Daughter’s Choice

  The Family at Number Five

  Far From Home

  The Gingerbread Girl

  The Girl With No Home

  Hay Bales and Hollyhocks

  A Home For Tilly

  Hot Pies on the Tram Car

  Molly’s Journey

  The Poplar Penny Whistlers

 
The Punch and Judy Girl

  The Watercress Girls

  Welcome to the world of Sheila Newberry!

  Keep reading for more from Sheila Newberry, to discover a recipe that features in this novel and to find out more about what Sheila is doing next . . .

  We’d also like to introduce you to MEMORY LANE, our special community for the very best of saga writing from authors you know and love and new ones we simply can’t wait for you to meet. Read on and join our club!

  www.MemoryLane.club

  Meet Sheila Newberry

  I’ve been writing since I was three years old, and even told myself stories in my cot. So it came as a shock when I was whacked round the head by my volatile kindergarten teacher for daydreaming about stories when I was supposed to be chanting the phonetic alphabet. My mother received a letter from my teacher saying, ‘Sheila will not speak. Why?’ Mum told her that it was because I was scared stiff in class. I was immediately moved up two classes. Here I was given the task of encouraging the slow readers. This was something I was good at but still felt that I didn’t fit in. Later, I learned that another teacher had saved all my compositions saying they inspired many children in later years.

  I had scarlet fever in the spring of 1939, and when I returned to our home near Croydon, I saw changes which puzzled me – sandbags, shelters in back gardens, camouflaged by moss and daisies, and windows re-enforced with criss-crossed tape. Children had iron rations in Oxo tins – we ate the contents during rehearsals for air-raids – and gas masks were given out. I especially recall the stifling rubber. We spent the summer holiday, as usual, in Suffolk and I remember being puzzled when my father left us there, as the Admiralty staff was moving to Bath. ‘War’ was not mentioned but we were now officially evacuees, living with relatives in a small cottage in a sleepy village.

  On and off, we returned to London at the wrong times. We were bombed out in 1940 and dodging doodlebugs in 1943. I thought of Suffolk as my home. I was still writing – on flyleaves of books cut out by friends – and every Friday I told stories about Black-eyed Bill the Pirate to the whole school in the village hut. I wrote my first pantomime at nine years old, and was awarded the part of Puss in Boots. I wore a costume made from blackout curtains. We were back in our patched-up London home to celebrate VE night and dancing in the street. Lights blazed – it was very exciting.

  I had a moment of glory when I won an essay competition that 3000 schoolchildren had entered. The subject was waste paper, which we all collected avidly! At my new school, I was encouraged by my teachers to concentrate on English Literature and Language, History and Art, and I did well in my final exams. I wanted to be a writer, but was told there was a shortage of paper! True. I wrote stories all the time and read many books. I was useless at games like netball as I was so short-sighted – I didn’t see the ball until it hit me. I still loved acting, and my favourite Shakespearian parts were Shylock and Lady Macbeth.

  When I left school, I worked in London at an academic publisher. I had wanted to be a reporter, but I couldn’t ride a bike! Two years after school, I met my husband John. We had nine children and lived on a smallholding in Kent with many pets (and pests). I wrote the whole time. The children did, too, but they were also artistic like John. We were all very happy. I acquired a typewriter and wrote short stories for children, articles on family life and romance for magazine. I received wonderful feedback. I soon graduated to writing novels and joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association. I have had many books published over the years and am over the moon to see my books out in the world once again.

  A Day I’ll Never Forget . . .

  I was inspired to write The Winter Baby years after visiting the deserted house and brickworks near Westerham in Kent. Here is an earlier memory of an historical walk I took to Westerham just after the war ended . . .

  We girls at Lady Edridge School were excited that our education now included outings to museums and art galleries, a trip down the Thames and to the Britain Can Make It exhibition in London. Until the terrible twins boarded a tube train going in the wrong direction and the teacher in charge “flapped.” But this time we would be more or less on our own!

  Our popular history teacher – the charismatic FF as she was known – suggested the walk, as we had been studying the Siege of Quebec, where General Wolfe, who was actually born in Westerham, commanded an army sent out to capture the capital of the French Colony in North America. Both he and the French Commander, Montcalm, were mortally wounded, but it was a victory for the British.

  One Saturday, my best friend Maggie and I caught a bus to Croydon and met up with our group. We began the long trek to Westerham to culminate at General Wolfe’s statue. We walked along in pairs in a straggling crocodile, referring to the map and wondering when we could open our gas mask cases, which were now used to carry our packed lunches. This was not permissible until we reached Westerham. FF and another teacher were travelling by car and, unbeknown to us, were checking our progress.

  We finally reached our destination and sat on a patch of grass opposite the lofty statue of the General – who naturally ignored us – to eat our spam sandwiches. A girl called Marion casually produced a banana, brought home by her recently demobbed father. She sliced the banana into six portions and generously shared this treat with us. None of us had tasted a banana since before the war. Just a mouthful each, but we felt we were the luckiest girls on the walk. The banana was the most memorable part of the exercise.

  You will see that I have named a character Marion in my book after that long ago friend . . .

  Elderflower Cordial and Wine

  During the glorious summer of 1914, Mrs Amos – who disapproved of most children – recruited half a dozen village boys and girls to help with harvesting the elderflower blossoms. She was famous for her elderflower cordial and wine, and reserved bottles for Christmas lunch with her nearest neighbours – the Mason family at Home Farm.

  Method

  Rinse the elderflower heads with cold water and dry with a tea towel before use.

  Cordial

  –Pour 2 ½ pints of boiling water onto 24 elderflower heads in a large pan, which must be scalded before use.

  –Add 3 ½ pounds of sugar and 1 sliced lemon.

  –Stir until the sugar dissolves, skim off any scum, then cover.

  –Stir twice a day for five days. Strain through muslin, then bottle.

  Wine

  –In a clean bucket, add 8 pints of boiling water to 8 large elderflower heads, and add the zest of 1 lemon.

  –Cover and leave to stand for four days, stirring occasionally. Strain through muslin.

  –Stir in 3lb of sugar, the juice of 1 lemon and ½ oz of yeast.

  –Allow to ferment at room temperature.

  –When the contents have ceased to bubble, stir the wine and leave it to settle for three days.

  –Pour into a demijohn to mature for three months before bottling.

  Raise your glass to Mrs Amos!

  Don’t miss Sheila Newberry’s next paperback, coming 2018 . . .

  THE GIRL WITH NO HOME

  Can she finally find the place she belongs?

  London, 1888.

  Abandoned by her mother at the age of seven, Jerusha Carey is no stranger to being left behind. And later when she marries Dan Applebee, an older, reliable farmer from Kent, she believes she has finally found her place in the world. Then disaster strikes.

  After the sudden death of her husband, Jerusha finds herself alone again. But the arrival of the mysterious Joe Finch – a traveller seeking work on her farm and a home for his daughter – sets Jerusha’s life on a whole new path . . .

  Could this be the happy ending she has been waiting for?

  Available now in ebook, or pre-order the paperback.

  Sign up to MEMORY LANE to find out more.

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  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Zaffre Publishing

  This ebook edition published in 2017 by

  Zaffre Publishing

  80-81 Wimpole St, London, W1G 9RE

  www.zaffrebooks.co.uk

  Copyright © Sheila Newberry, 2017

  The moral right of Sheila Newberry to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.