Dark Harvest

by Amy Myers

  She should be glad, she supposed, for their help in looking after Elizabeth, for she grew very tired. Even though Mary from the village did the cleaning, she was on the go from six to eleven, with hardly a pause, seven days a week. And she was up at nights too. She never had a minute to herself even to visit the village unless she could think of a good excuse to run an errand.

  She was lucky, she told herself, to have a roof over her head, and to be earning her own money. Well, not earning—the Miss Norvilles couldn’t afford more than her keep. But at least she had her separation allowance now she was married.

  Her only regular escape was on to Tillow Hill to scour the undergrowth and fields for young dandelion leaves, nettles for soup, wild garlic, and anything that could eke out their meagre diet. And all the while Elizabeth Agnes kicked her legs and cooed with her two elderly guardians.

  Darling, darling Reggie,

  What do you think? The tennis match is to take place at the Rectory to cock a snook at the Kaiser! It’s on the nineteenth. I shall go, but every moment I’m there I’ll be thinking of you and of our glorious day last year, and be glad that soon you will return safe and sound to play there again. I can’t even bear the smell of roses this year, not without you, but I shall go and help make sandwiches. Who was it ‘went on cutting bread and butter’ in life’s adversities? My darling love, since I’m talking of butter, have I ever mentioned to you that you are the butter of my life, and the jam too—

  Caroline broke off. It was not easy to think what to say next. She could not ask what he was doing, for he could not, or would not, write much about that. But if she wrote of her own life all the time, she felt callous. She had told him in a previous letter about her move to London, explaining that this way she could oblige his mother by giving up her field work. For the moment, she had added—just in case. ‘Oblige’ Lady Hunney indeed. It was like obliging the Kaiser!

  Reggie had not commented in his reply save to say he was glad she was enjoying her new job. She had informed him that she was working for the WSPU war effort, and if he chose to think this was the recruiting side rather than the advancement of women’s role in the war, so much the better. Lady Hunney, she was well aware, was so violently opposed to the suffragist movement, whether militant or not, that it could only do harm to spell out exactly what she was doing.

  George was engrossed in a newspaper story of how Flight Sub-Lieutenant Warneford had won his VC shooting down a Zep over Belgium a week ago. He had reached the part where Warneford succeeded in wrestling his Morase Parasol back under control, but had to land to make repairs in enemy territory. How did he get off the ground again with no one to swing the prop? The chaps at Skinner’s had been talking of little else all week. George still had six months to wait before he could join the Air Force. As soon as he was seventeen, he’d have a shot at it—and tell the Pater afterwards. He worried over how wrong it was to wish the war would continue till Christmas at least, and decided he would add an ‘if’ to his nightly prayer to the Almighty.

  His father chose that moment to enter the morning room. ‘Ah, George, have you finished the parish magazine yet?’

  George had not.

  His father looked at him quizzically. Guilt was written all over his son’s face. ‘Good. I’ve an item for you. A few words about young Jack Hallet. He’s died from typhoid in Gallipoli.’ He paused. ‘So none of your cartoons, George. They would not be appropriate this month.’

  ‘But my cartoons are serious, Father.’ George was indignant. ‘This one has a shell hole and the Kaiser and Sir John French meeting in it saying—’

  ‘Not this month, if you please, George. We must think of the bereaved.’

  George slumped in his chair after his father had left. Nothing, but nothing to do except swot for Oxford. Who wanted to go to Oxford anyway to study Julius Caesar’s boring campaigns?’ They offered little in comparison with what was going on now. Then he had a brilliant idea and seized his sketch pad, chuckling. Pa couldn’t say this was a war cartoon. Now if he put the Kaiser in a toga …

  Dr Beth Parry, clutching her bag, ran to Ashden school after a summons from Philip Ryde. One of the children, Ernie Thorn, had fallen and hurt his leg. When she arrived, Ernie was sitting on the grass supported by Philip, with a crowd of awed children surrounding them. Philip greeted her with relief as Ernie let out a wail.

  ‘We’ll have it sorted out in no time, young man.’ Beth assessed the way the foot was lying. ‘Can you raise your foot, Ernie? Just a little?’

  Ernie tried. Nothing happened. He raised frightened eyes to Dr Parry. ‘We’re going to tuck you up nice and warm, Ernie, even though it’s June. Do you have a blanket, Mr Ryde?’

  ‘My sister’s out,’ Philip began, ‘otherwise—’

  ‘I’d like to telephone Ashden Manor Hospital. I think young Ernie has a fracture on the shaft of the leg, and I know Ashden has a new kind of splint—a Thomas splint—specially designed for this type of accident. But they need to apply it here before he’s moved.’

  Philip pointed to the telephone on the wall of the entrance hall to his quarters. He fetched the blanket while she made the call.

  When they went back outside, however, Len Thorn was standing belligerently over his young cousin. ‘Well, well.’ He swaggered towards Beth, looking her up and down insolently, from the neat black hat to her boots. ‘Our new lady doctor, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. Mr Thorn, isn’t it?’ she returned.

  ‘My Uncle Len,’ Ernie piped up.

  ‘That’s right, and I’d like to know just what you are doing to this poor little chap.’

  ‘Looking after his broken leg, Mr Thorn. He needs a special splint and it’s on its way.’

  ‘One of those street-corner quacks, are you? Or a VAD? Virgins are Dangerous, that’s what I call ’em.’ Len sniggered.

  Philip stepped forward. ‘Go home, Len. I won’t have that talk here.’

  ‘And leave young Ernie with Florence Nightingale?’

  ‘If you care to consult the British Medical Association—’ Beth’s voice suggested Len might not be capable of reading, ‘you will find I am a fully qualified doctor. You need have no concern for your cousin.’

  ‘No concern?’ Indignation was written all over Len’s face. ‘It’s you oughta be concerned, Miss Call-Me-Doctor Parry. All our gallant men are in the trenches. What’s going to happen to them when they come home and find women doing their jobs? You tell me that.’

  ‘I really haven’t the time to tell you anything, Mr Thorn. I’m here to look after Ernie.’

  There was a wail from Ernie, who clearly thought it about time he received more attention and another humbug.

  ‘Piss off, woman,’ Len snarled, swinging a leg to stand astride the child, and hitting the injured limb by mistake. Ernie screamed in agony.

  Red with anger, Philip grabbed his arm to frogmarch him from the premises, but a punch in the face from Len’s other hand sent him staggering back: ‘A pity you don’t expend your fighting energy in the trenches, Len,’ Philip retorted.

  ‘Pity you can’t, Mr Crippled Constable.’ Losing interest in Ernie, Len went out of the gate laughing, just as the motor ambulance arrived, complete with Ashden doctor, a VAD and splint.

  It took half an hour to despatch Ernie and notify his parents. When at last they had departed, Philip turned to Beth, who was repacking her bag. ‘I’m sorry you should have been so insulted on school property, Dr Parry.’

  ‘Len isn’t the first, Mr Ryde. Neither, I fear, will he be the last.’ Beth tried to sound cool, but did not completely succeed.

  ‘It’s not easy for the villagers. You’re young and unmarried. In a place like Ashden where new ways come slowly, there is bound to be difficulty. May I offer you some tea?’

  She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘I should like that, Mr Ryde. And perhaps,’ she added wryly, ‘I can give you some ointment for the black eye which will doubtless shortly be emerging on my account.’

 
Isabel was annoyed. Frank Eliot never seemed to be in, and she just had to get the rota organised for July. It was too demeaning to have to walk to the hopgardens to find him, so she compromised. She would call earlier in the evening and catch him as he left the farm to return home. This plan worked well: as she arrived at the front door of the cottage she saw him walking down the track from the hopgardens towards her.

  Her heart seemed to flutter, but she tried to ignore it. He might be attractive but he was no gentleman and she was, after all, a married lady. He had behaved abominably to her on countless occasions and yet, she owned to herself, his face leapt before her in her dreams with far more alacrity than Robert’s ever did.

  She would not walk towards him, she would not—but he seemed in no hurry to rush towards her. So she prepared a speech, clutching her notepad in as businesslike a fashion as she could. She watched his feet crunching over the ground; it was less dangerous than watching his face. When should she speak? Now? When he doffed his hat?

  She didn’t say anything in the end; and he didn’t bother to doff the panama. He simply removed the notepad from her hand, laid it on the shelf in the porch, put his arms round her and kissed her. Not harshly, not mockingly, but so sweetly she found herself responding. At last he disengaged himself, and stared at her with those strange eyes of his.

  ‘You’re very beautiful, Isabel. You need to be loved, you need to blossom and flourish like a rose.’

  She clung to him, though a tiny part of her was annoyed that he dared to call her by her Christian name. She was a Swinford-Browne.

  ‘Will you come in, Isabel?’ He stepped indoors and stretched a hand to her.

  It was dark in there for the ceilings were low and sunlight did not penetrate.

  She swallowed. She wanted very much to go into the house, but the thought of what Father would say and the fear of crossing that threshold into the unknown held her back. ‘No,’ she finally blurted out.

  Frank watched as she left, walking, then breaking into a run. Then he picked up her forgotten notebook and bore it into the house like a trophy.

  In bed that night Isabel tossed and turned. If only she could just talk to Frank Eliot, even have him kiss her, but without any danger that he would take liberties like he had in Hop House—or even worse. The thought of the ‘even worse’ sent a thrill down her body. What was she to do?’

  Then, in the small hours, when hope of sleep was lost, a brilliant idea came to her: the tennis match.

  ‘I’m here, Mrs Dibble.’ Caroline ran into the kitchen. ‘I hope there are some sandwiches left for me to make.’

  Harriet and Myrtle looked up. All morning they had run back and forth at Mrs Dibble’s command; the slightest objection being met with the retort that it was for the war effort. They couldn’t see the connection.

  ‘There are, Miss Caroline.’ Mrs Dibble was determined not to betray how pleased she was to see her back. ‘And crusts on this year, if you please. Bread’s up to eight pence a loaf.’

  ‘No soldiers for breakfast then?’ Caroline joked. A boiled egg accompanied by Mrs Dibble’s soldiers of newly baked bread cut into slivers, crustless, and buttered, had always been a special treat at the Rectory.

  ‘The only soldiers round here now are those poor souls at the Manor, God bless them. Hoping to get a decent tea for once this afternoon—that’s if you get on with that icing, Myrtle,’ she snapped, seeing her minion staring at Miss Caroline’s short skirt.

  Caroline set to work. For all her brave words, she loathed these piles of sandwiches in the morning—but how she loved them at tea, filled with cucumber, cheese from the Sharpes’ dairy farm, egg and cress, and cinnamon and sugar. None of that today, she realised, with sugar being so expensive. Even Mrs Dibble’s secret stores couldn’t last for ever.

  ‘Where’s my mother, Mrs Dibble?’

  ‘At Home Farm to see if she could persuade their high and mighty highnesses, the Sharpes, to part with some more cream. They don’t deliver now.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ Caroline was surprised—the Sharpes had always delivered.

  ‘Young Joey ran off to join the Navy on his fifteenth birthday, that’s why not.’ Things had come to a pretty pass when the Rector’s wife had to go to plead for cream in person. The sooner this war was over and they could get back to normal living the better, in Mrs Dibble’s view.

  The players assembled in the early afternoon: Phoebe, agog with excitement, Eleanor, Beatrice Ryde, acutely conscious of the honour of playing at the Rectory, Patricia Swinford-Browne, home on leave from the police, Isabel, Janie Marden, Beth Parry, and Caroline herself. To Caroline’s regret, Penelope had returned to Serbia to rejoin Lady Paget’s unit.

  The men had been rather more difficult to drum up, George explained. He was playing, as was Dr Cuss. Philip had volunteered to have a go, and Isabel had suggested Frank Eliot—it was decent of her to help. Charles Pickering was also here, although George doubted whether he knew the difference between a tennis racket and a cricket bat. Tim Marden was home on leave from the RNAS and Phoebe had offered to fill the gaps with a couple of soldiers from Crowborough. George had been doubtful and offered to find a couple of Skinner’s chaps, but she seemed quite keen, so they compromised with a school chum of his and a soldier called Harry Darling—stupid name for a chap.

  How different it all was from last year, Caroline thought. Then Daniel had been a player, not one of the fifteen officers watching round the court, together with two VADs. Last year Tilly and Felicia had been here, not under fire in the front line tending maimed bodies. Last year Robert had been playing and now he was in the 1st/4th Northamptons billeted in St Albans, waiting to go overseas. And last year, oh, last year, Reggie had been here too.

  With an effort, she put him out of her mind and began to enjoy the afternoon. But at the toss she was awarded Charles as partner, and her heart sank. In her view, Charles was not only a stuffed shirt of a curate, but his habit of looking down his long nose at her reminded her of the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. Bother, that made her think of Aunt Tilly, who used to read it to them when they were young.

  ‘Sorry, Charles, you’ve drawn me.’ She greeted him as cheerfully as she could. ‘I’m renowned for being the only one in the family whose serve can always be returned.’

  ‘In that case, Caroline,’ he pushed his spectacles further up his nose, ‘I suggest I cover centre court and rear court, and you take the net.’

  Pompous ass, she thought, pointedly sitting next to Beth Parry while Patricia and George started to play.

  Pit-pat, pit-pat, comforting familiar sounds. Was it wrong of her, she wondered, to enjoy being in the Rectory garden with roses and flowers spilling everywhere and wisteria tumbling over the walls? Was it wrong to enjoy this brief respite from war? The sky overhead was unbroken by cloud; no Zeps would come droning over the Rectory.

  ‘Why did you come to Ashden?’ she asked Beth, ‘and not one of the London hospitals?’

  ‘Where they are more used to women, you mean?’ Beth replied levelly.

  Taken aback, Caroline agreed that’s probably what she had meant.

  ‘I come from a small village in Suffolk. I know villages, I don’t know London. I do what I can do best here. Surely that’s what every woman should do?’

  Caroline felt reproved. She wasn’t sure what she thought of Beth Parry. ‘If it’s possible,’ she replied coolly. A pause. ‘Do you play much tennis, Dr Parry?’

  ‘I believe. Miss Lilley, you’re about to discover. We are being summoned on to the court.’

  Infuriatingly Beth Parry was a very good player and so, remarkably, was Charles Pickering. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Frank Eliot was almost as incompetent as she was, Caroline would have been outplayed all round. As it was their one-set match turned into a battle between Charles and Beth, taking the score to an exhausting fifteen-thirteen before Beth and Frank finally achieved victory. By this time, Caroline knew exactly what she thought of Dr Parry. She didn’t like
her.

  Laurence was absorbed in watching the tennis match, which was rare for him for he had never been a player. In particular he realised he was watching Beth Parry, and wondering how she would fare in the larger game of life in Ashden. Dr Marden was enthusiastic about her gifts as a doctor, but even he could not persuade Ashden of this if the villagers decided against her. Laurence supposed it was almost fortunate that the Mutters and Thorns had chosen her as another prize to fight over. Len Thorn’s loud and widely pronounced views on women doctors had set the Mutters on the opposite track and he found himself hoping that the Mutters would win.

  Dr Parry was a woman of unusual capability, and her handsome face was beginning to fascinate him.

  Charles Pickering seemed to assume that their partnership in the match entitled him to her company throughout the dance on the Rectory terrace in the evening, Caroline realised ruefully. Phoebe was leaping around with her young soldier who had lost some of his shyness and was dancing to George’s ragtime records with great enthusiasm. Philip, who usually made a beeline for Caroline, partnered Beth Parry, George kept trying to distract Eleanor from Dr Cuss, and Isabel was dancing with Frank Eliot. Surely she was rather close? Caroline hoped Father wasn’t watching, and then saw that he wasn’t. He was dancing with Mother, who was looking better than Caroline had seen her for a long time, eyes sparkling, and her full tall figure majestic in a dress made from green holland by Mrs Hazel. She was suddenly aware that Charles’s hand felt warm on her back.

  ‘Miss Lilley—’

  ‘Caroline, please,’ she said politely.

  ‘Thank you, Caroline. This is very pleasant.’

  He was trying to be nice to her, she thought, and did her best to respond. He couldn’t be blamed for the ache inside her; for her feeling of resentment that she was dancing with him and not with Reggie.