Tall Chimneys: A British Family Saga Spanning 100 Years

by Allie Cresswell

  The afternoon drew in and it was soon dark outside. I thought I was going to have to light the fire, perhaps even offer dinner, but at last the telephone began to ring.

  To my dismay, Colin could offer me no support. ‘The Americans are taking over the whole shooting match,’ he told me, across a line alive with static. ‘It would cause a diplomatic incident if I were to refuse them houseroom, Evelyn. You’ll have to put them up.’

  ‘But what if you need the place for one of your pow-wows?’ I asked. ‘We can hardly ask the Cabinet to share the place with a bunch of GIs.’

  ‘It probably won’t come to that,’ Colin said. ‘Put them up in the north wing, where it’s cold and draughty, and don’t let them into the cellar.’

  I returned to the library with a heavy heart. ‘My brother agrees to extend his hospitality,’ I said, with a fixed, chilly smile, ‘although I ought to qualify that term: we live frugally; the generator is unreliable and the plumbing very testy. Our victuals are by no means lavish. That said, I shall prepare rooms tomorrow.’

  ‘Victuals?’ Captain Brook turned a questioning eye on his companion.

  ‘Supplies, I guess,’ he replied, with a shrug.

  The enormity of what was about to happen hit me in a sudden wave of anxiety. Four men - with aides? Valets? I didn’t know what arrangements officers made for their personal care. Did four really mean eight? Or more? Or would I be expected to do their laundry, clean their boots, press their shirts? And these would be with me for the foreseeable future, permanent inhabitants, unlike Colin’s guests, who came and stayed for three or four days and then went away again. My domain would be occupied, my little empire compromised. The idea made my chest squeeze with a kind of panic. ‘My daughter and I live alone in the house,’ I said, with a wobble in my voice which must have completely destroyed the Mrs Danvers impression I had managed to carry off up to this point. I didn’t like the vulnerability it betrayed, but I felt it had to be said for Awan’s sake, as well as for my own. ‘There are no live-in servants either male or female. My…’ I almost said ‘husband’ but caught myself in time; they might know I was unmarried - Captain Bentley’s little book had seemed a fairly comprehensive inventory of the local houses and inhabitants. ‘My daughter’s…’ Again ‘father’ was a stretch on the truth. ‘John,’ I clarified, at last, ‘works for Military Intelligence in London. Can I assume my guests will respect our situation? And not expect to be waited on hand and foot? And the house,’ I cast an arm out to indicate the neat if rather well-worn furniture, the artefacts in the cabinets, the gloomy portraiture, ‘one hears such tales of disrespect and vandalism,’ I concluded.

  ‘Have no fear, ma’am,’ Captain Brook said, rising to his feet and affixing his cap to his head. ‘Captain Bentley and I will be two of the officers billeted on you. We’ll ensure you and this wonderful old house are treated with the utmost respect at all times. On the matter of ‘victuals’, you’ll have our ration books and I’ll send our quartermaster to you.’

  This, at least, was promising. Captains Brook and Bentley took their leave, and it wasn’t until they were out of the door and on their way to their jeep that the tic in Captain Bentley’s face climaxed into a broad grin. That he had been supressing laughter made me both angry and amused, and angry at myself for being amused. I shut the door on them with more vigour than I had intended, and a shower of motes shook from the chandelier and descended like infinitesimal snowflakes to the polished wooden floor.

  Captains Brook and Bentley moved their things into Tall Chimneys the following day. I led them down the grim, bare-boarded corridors of the north wing and showed them into two of the four large but rather drear rooms I had selected for my guests. They had unprepossessing views over the stable yard and the kitchen garden. The furniture in each was by no means the best I had to offer. Both rooms had scarred, wonky-legged side tables liable to throw any object placed on them right off again. One had a chest whose drawers stuck immovably at a point where it was impossible to get anything in or out, another a wardrobe whose doors wouldn’t close properly. The mattresses in all had seen much better days, the carpets were worn, the single arm chairs were as uncomfortable as it was possible to imagine. Earlier I had wrenched open the recalcitrant windows and swept a harvest of flies and desiccated moths from the window ledges, raised a cloud of dust from atop the armoires and collected up the soot fall from the hearths. I had made up the beds with fresh sheets, though, spread clean antimacassars on the spiteful armchairs and taken the rugs into the yard for a good beating. As a last minute offering I had placed bowls of fruit to hand, and added small vases of flowers from the garden. I thought the rooms looked welcoming in a resigned sort of way; ‘Alright, stay if you must,’ they seemed to say, ‘but don’t expect me to make much of an effort for you.’ It was an attitude which uncannily reflected my own. The single bathroom I had allocated for their shared use was some distance away, round a corner and up a short, shadowed and notoriously unexpected flight of stairs, off a half-landing. Hot water rarely made it that far up the system. The toilet flush was unreliable.

  ‘Wonderful, thank you,’ the two men chorused, allowing no trace of dismay to show on their faces.

  I showed them the dining room. ‘Well this is very splendid!’ exclaimed Captain Brook, looking around at the polished furniture and gleaming silver, ‘we haven’t anything like this at home.’

  ‘What time will you require breakfast?’ I asked. They cheerfully named an ungodly hour and my heart sank. ‘And what kinds of things do you prefer?’ I asked, dully.

  ‘Oh, grits, eggs, biscuits and gravy,’ Captain Brook said, ‘the usual things, you know?’

  I didn’t know. Eggs, I could manage. I had a vague idea that ‘grits’ were a sort of porridge. But no combination I could imagine of biscuits and gravy could be suitable for human consumption. ‘And dinner?’ They said when on-duty they would eat dinner at the camp, which was a relief. But on other days ‘whatever you’re having will be just fine.’

  Captains Brook and Bentley were my guests for the next few months. Other officers came and went, each staying only the two weeks allocated for their men to be trained up at the airfield, and they hardly registered with me. To be sure they were polite enough, respectful if brusque at times, preoccupied with their men and their mission I supposed. Amongst themselves they showed a comradeship which I rather envied, but, to me, they were a closed book and if any of them noticed me at all, they did not show it. They returned my cold, resentful hospitality with formal, lukewarm thanks. I did nothing to provide more than the most basic bed and board; hard beds, cold baths, unappetising food. I was sorry to see them come and glad to see them go and I made no secret of it to them, maintaining a haughty, dignified front. Whilst the British officers respected my reserve, the Americans were not a whit deterred, gushingly friendly and enthusiastic at all times, meeting my po-faced surliness with wide displays of their enviable dentistry. Perhaps they had been told English people were cold, rude and suspicious - well, all I can say is that I did not disappoint.

  The nature of the visiting platoons’ training soon became clear; they were to learn to jump out of aeroplanes wearing parachutes and it was the 2nd Battalion, 503rd PIR’s job to teach them how. The men were schooled in the use and application of their various pack items, shown how to jump and roll on landing, instructed on the safe stashing of their gear in enemy territory. Then they jumped; first from towers of hay-bales and later from taller structures, then from planes. These, sometimes piloted by Brook and Bentley, took off several times a day with their green-gilled cargo. Men fell to earth on the moor and the surrounding farmlands, sometimes breaking legs and arms or giving themselves concussion, but more often bruised but safe. I heard reports of men falling through barn roofs, men landing in duck ponds, men suspended by loops of webbing from trees. One fool landed on the roof of the church and was there for hours while a steeple jack was brought from Sheffield. I got used to hearing the roar of the aeroplanes as
they took off from the airstrip and climbed into the sky above Tall Chimneys. From time to time the jumps were at night; then the shriek of the aircraft would be followed by whistles as men combed the moor for airmen who had not reported back. Lights could be seen against the drab grey of moorland on those summer nights when it never properly went dark.

  Occasionally the military personnel would be joined by others, very cloak-and-dagger, ‘specialists’ who were to be trained, flown at night over enemy territory and dropped in secret for some highly classified mission.

  The officers caused a good deal of work; the laundering of their towels and bedsheets, cleaning their rooms, the preparation of their food. Where they got their personal laundry done I did not know and did not ask in case that, too, fell to my lot. They used one of the smaller drawing rooms for their recreation, bringing in bottles of beer from goodness knows where, and smoking endless cigarettes. The bottles were always neatly gathered for collection, the cigarette stubs never anywhere other than in the ashtrays or the grate, and yet I railed at their untidiness and resented their intrusion into my domain. They seemed constitutionally unable to plump a cushion or to draw the curtains properly. There was a certain table which was always out of place when I entered the room; it drove me half demented. At night their conversation, muted enough in volume, yet clearly high-spirited in nature, kept me awake. They found the gramophone and played their own records on it, strange music which pulled at the soul, and dance music which made my feet twitch.

  Other houses across the country were being ruined by the military; priceless marble fireplaces used as target practice, banisters hundreds of years old ripped out for firewood, ancient books burned, grand pianos disembowelled, gardens ruined. Most of them were never to recover, their classical beauty gone forever, the homes they had provided to English gentry decimated beyond repair. Tall Chimneys got off lightly in comparison, and yet my resentment at these unwanted guests, these cuckoos in my private nest, felt like an equal outrage. I took to prowling the corridors, checking up on rooms I would scarcely venture into in normal days, casting jealous eyes over the faded furnishings and family collections to ensure nothing had been disturbed or gone missing.

  At first I served the men their breakfast myself, and then hurried downstairs to rouse Awan and get her ready for school. I dressed in sober black, and waited on them without a smile in the blue dawn gloaming. But several mornings the eggs and porridge went cold; nobody emerged from their rooms to eat it, or returned from the base. By the time I’d realised there would be no partakers for breakfast that day, Awan would be downstairs helping herself to inappropriate foods from the larder, her hair a bird’s nest of tangles, her face unwashed, her school clothes askew. Remedying these matters would make her late for school. On my return the food in the dining room would be congealed and useless for anything except the pig. My anger as I cleared away mounted like magma in a volcano.

  On one of these days Captain Bentley caught me clearing the uneaten food away as he returned, and I unleashed my anger on him. What waste! Did he not know how precious food was? What rudeness! Could somebody not have telephoned, to let me know? What ingratitude! I had been up since four thirty, all for nothing.

  Captain Bentley stood on the threshold of the dining room and looked at me steadily as I vented my spleen. His eyes, grey, calm and gentle, never left me as I stormed around the room crossly throwing plates onto a tray and scraping scraps into a bowl. He stood perfectly still, hardly bracing himself against my onslaught, but taking it full on, like a sturdy, determined boat withstanding the sea’s cruel waves as they crashed onto its deck in a storm. Some part of me noted, but did not understand, the less than pristine state of his uniform - his flying jacket was flung casually round his shoulders, the bottoms of his trousers were dark with moisture. He wore no boots at all; a toe peeped shyly from a hole in his sock.

  Presently my outburst ran out of energy and I fell silent.

  ‘I am very sorry, ma’am,’ Captain Bentley said. ‘We had an incident this morning. One of our craft had engine trouble. There was an emergency landing. A small fire.’ He pushed back the flap of his jacket to show me his left arm was encased in bandages.

  I felt terrible. ‘You’re hurt?’ I asked.

  ‘A slight burn,’ he shrugged, ‘it’s nothing much.’

  ‘What can I do for you?’ I asked, my anger of only moments before completely forgotten.

  He hesitated, ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘if you wouldn’t mind, ma’am, I could really use a cup of coffee.’

  I took him down to the kitchen and made coffee to his instruction - nothing like the coffee I had been serving to them for the duration of their stay. As it brewed he told me a little of the morning’s incident - a problem on take-off, an engine on fire, the troops in the body of the aircraft likely to suffer from the effects of heat, smoke inhalation, oxygen-starvation, panic. As co-pilot the job had fallen to him to tackle the blaze as best he could, hence the burn on his arm. ‘Not too bad,’ he said, ruefully, ‘but I’ll be out of action for a while.’

  ‘And Captain Brook?’ I asked.

  ‘Back at base, filling out reports,’ he said.

  Captain Bentley sat at the kitchen table and drank cup after cup of the dark, bitter coffee as though it was the elixir of life. In spite of the stimulant the coffee must be providing he looked tired, his eyes shadowed and circled. His was a handsome face - broad jaw balanced by a wide, smooth forehead, the soft grey eyes I have already described, a good nose, full lips. He had a mole on one cheekbone, not round as these things usually are, but the shape of a sickle moon. In his pallor it was more pronounced than usual, its edges melding into the dark smudges beneath his eyes. It occurred to me in a blinding flash of clarity he had not been sleeping well - apart, I mean from working nights, long hours, instructing wave after wave of green recruits - he had found no comfort in the cheerless bed I had allocated him, the rattling windows had kept him awake, the argumentative furniture had made life difficult, the food I had served up had given no pleasure. I estimated his age - perhaps twenty eight or nine - and realised I knew absolutely nothing at all about him other than that he came from a small town in Michigan. I couldn’t even remember his Christian name. In all likelihood he would be gone in a few weeks, part of the big initiative we all knew was being planned. For all I knew he would be killed, or horribly wounded. And what would his last memories be? Of a pleasant house in the English countryside? Of a friendly English woman? Of decent food and sweet dreams on an ancient bed? No. It would all be sourness and frugality, black looks and resentful silences. I asked myself how I would feel if John had been treated so, and felt ashamed.

  Presently the coffee seemed to galvanise Captain Bentley. He sat up straighter and began to take an interest in his surroundings. ‘This is a wonderful room,’ he observed, eyeing the copper pans hanging from the beams, the huge old range - unlit now, it being summer time - but beautifully blacked and gleaming, the pots of herbs on the window ledge, the hand-made cushions on the comfortable chairs.

  ‘It’s seen some history,’ I agreed, ‘even in my time, and hundreds of years before that.’

  ‘Our place is old,’ he replied, ‘but nothing like this.’

  I asked him about his home - a fruit farm in the State of Michigan, where apples and pears grew in abundance in the summer months, and where cold cut like a knife in the winter, blackening the pruned trees so it seemed impossible they could survive. ‘The wind comes over the lake from Canada, ma’am,’ he explained, ‘and beyond that, from the Arctic. Silver Beach - that’s the beach in St Joseph’s - it’s beautiful in summer, and the town’s folks like to spend time on the shore, but in winter it’s like being at the North Pole. The houses all batten down, and many folks go to their winter houses in Chicago. They just can’t stand it. But my family stays put on the farm, and we hunker down and see it out.’ He spoke with such warmth and a wistful, heart-sore longing that I encouraged him to tell me more. He spoke of his p
arents (Ma and Pa) and his sister, and of his older brother, killed in a boating accident the previous year.

  ‘Your mother must have been very unhappy to see you sign up,’ I remarked, ‘having lost one son already.’

  He nodded. ‘She was mad,’ he agreed. ‘But I had some flying experience, from the crop-sprayer - so few men have - so she knew I had to do it.’

  ‘Do you write to her?’

  He shook his head, sadly, and gave an apologetic little shrug. ‘I’m not much of a letter writer.’

  ‘I bet you write to your sweet-heart,’ I said, teasingly.

  ‘No, ma’am,’ he said.

  My conversation with Captain Bentley marked a turning point in my attitude to and relationship with my guests. I announced that breakfast would no longer be served in the dining room, but in the kitchen. I showed the men how to cook bacon - when we had it - and scramble eggs, and left oats and bread, tea and coffee available for them to help themselves to at whatever time they liked. In turn they initiated me into the mysteries of biscuits and gravy (a salty, scone-like bake and a sauce made from the fat of cooked sausages, flour and milk.) They showed me how to make waffles, and, from somewhere, brought me a waffle iron and a bottle of Maple syrup whose sticky sweetness threw Awan into transports of bliss. Ground coffee arrived from the quartermaster’s stores and I soon knew how to brew it to their taste and even to quite enjoy it myself. In the evenings I served their supper at the kitchen table, and Awan and I sat with them and listened to the stories of their day - the men who had jumped, the ones who had baulked, the daily roll-call of injuries and small triumphs. The officers with children at home liked to read to Awan, or to help her with her sums, and I would watch her halo of blonde curls press against the crew cut of a GI or the raspy cheek of a British officer in the last light of the day and hope that, for each of them, a lonely hole was being filled.