‘Did you suppose that royalty didn’t have pelvises and flesh that could bruise, Mother?’ Ellen said in amusement, winking at Angel.
Angel didn’t hear her. The imagery of the scene was too vivid in her mind. She was sorry for the King, of course, and it must be horribly painful … but the group of RFC men may well have included Jacques among those who were cheering and smiling … and he was suddenly close to her in spirit, as it seemed he hadn’t been for months.
‘Mother, I think I’d like to learn First Aid.’
Angel said the words in a tremendous rush before she could stop to think.
Clemence lowered her newspaper a fraction. A year ago she would have been horrified. Now, after looking doubtfully at Angel’s determined face for a moment, she gave a small resigned sigh.
‘I suppose it’s not a bad thing to do. There’s an establishment in Bristol where you could learn to roll bandages and things like that. It would be a useful occupation. Yes, I think it’s an admirable suggestion, my dear.’
Angel tried not to look at Ellen. Ellen had a knack of reading her mind. Ellen would know immediately that learning First Aid was not going to be confined to rolling bits of cotton into bandages in a First Aid Depot in Bristol. Ellen would know…
Christmas came and went. The soldiers still in the house helped to make it a jolly affair. Dougal’s arm had got infected now, and he was receiving daily medical attention in Bristol, and so still remaining at Meadowcroft.
‘My God, I think you may be right,’ Ellen whispered to Angel.
‘His eyes do follow Louise around. He’s like an adoring sheepdog.’
‘I’d say he’s more the handsome wolfhound, if you get my meaning,’ Angel said. ‘Stanley definitely comes out second-best in the vitality stakes!’
Stanley was home on leave for Christmas, and oh-so-correct in his dealings with the billetted soldiers. He couldn’t relax. He was an officer, and would always be aware of his status. Let the girls play their party games, and his parents-in-law sit back and smile indulgently. Stanley knew his place, and would have a word or two with Louise later. It was hardly seemly to cavort about like this. Christmas or no Christmas, it really wasn’t cricket.
Sir Fred Bannister sat dreamily, his mind many miles away from the homely little scene. Big house or small, the traditions were the same. The great Christmas lunch, somewhat depleted by necessity this year, the holly and the ivy, the huge tree in the window adorned with painted fir cones and decorations, the paper chains the girls made every year to drape across the room, the bowls of Christmas roses and greenery from the hedgerows that Clemence arranged so artistically. Christmas was Christmas … and in a snug little cottage in Yorkshire, his Harriet would be spending a lonely day with only an elderly neighbour or two for company. He raised his glass of port wine in silent tribute to his love, and wished with all his heart that he could be there with her now.
Soon, he had promised her. As soon as he could get away from the jollifications at home, they would have a late Christmas of their own. He would take her to the coast, to Scarborough, perhaps, and they’d spend a few nights in a posh hotel as plain Mr and Mrs Anybody. Harriet had kissed him with her soft lips, her arms holding him close, the warm musky scent of her pervading his nostrils and intoxicating his soul.
Ah, Harriet, Harriet … the music of her name drifted through his mind, an echoing refrain that had been repeated a thousand times. Why didn’t I meet you a lifetime ago…?
‘Daddy, you’re going to spill port wine all over the carpet if you drop off to sleep!’
It was Angel’s amused, melodious voice that penetrated his dreaming, and his eyes opened quickly. She knelt down in front of him, his precious girl, and gently took the glass from his hand. He bent swiftly to kiss her. She was the best reason for having married Clemence. To his shame, Fred acknowledged it yet again.
Angel straightened, strangely moved by the tender, faraway look she had momentarily glimpsed in her father’s eyes. How odd. How extremely odd. It had reminded her so much of the yearning in her mirrored face when she was thinking of Jacques.
They were shrieking at her to join in the game of charades with the rest of the young company, and she forgot all about her father’s dreaming look. Or rather, it was filed away in her mind, the way interesting bits of unrelated information were.
In January, 1916, conscription came in. Single men were called upon first. There was much confusion. Those of the Quaker faith refused to join, being adamant against killing. Many conscientious objectors were brought before local tribunals, and if the objections were genuine, they were given other important work to do, such as First Aid assistance at the Front, or working on the land. If they totally refused to help the war effort, they were simply sent to prison.
‘Poor things,’ Angel said sympathetically. ‘Why should they be penalised for their faith?’
‘People always have been. Religion has caused more trouble in the world than any other factor. Don’t you know your history, darling?’ Fred said, preparing to leave for Yorkshire, and thankfully so. A whole three weeks at home, and he was straining at the leash, stifled by Clemence’s very presence.
‘We’ve got one at the farm,’ Ellen said suddenly. ‘At least, we’re being sent one. I’m not at all keen to meet him.’
Angel was offended on the unknown man’s behalf. ‘Why not? He’s no different from any other man. If he does a good job for your Mr Chard, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?’
‘He’s not my Mr Chard,’ Ellen replied automatically. ‘Anyway, he’s probably very dreary, one of those pompous young men we used to see in London all the time. Thank God Mother can’t fill the house with those any more!’
Angel agreed wholeheartedly, watching Ellen as she pedalled away on her bicycle towards Peter Chard’s farm, well wrapped up in a heavy coat and boots, for the winter months were not the best farming weather. The new man was arriving that day. He was called Andrew Pender, and he was neither dreary nor pompous. He was a Cornishman, very tall and dashing, with crinkly brown hair and a wide wide smile. Ellen took one look at him and fell head over heels in love.
‘I shall be leaving here soon.’ Dougal Mackie made the statement one morning, the day after Fred had gone to Yorkshire, intending to stay for several weeks, ostensibly to supervise the adapting of the old machinery for the new intake of cloth for army uniforms.
‘Surely not!’ It was Louise who answered Dougal, her face slightly flushed, her eyes lowered quickly. ‘Your arm still pains you badly, Dougal. I’ve seen how you wince at times –’
He gave a short laugh. ‘I doubt the army will think it a fitting reason to keep me away from the Front, lassie!’
Clemence had taken offence at the soldier’s free use of the term, until informed scathingly by Ellen that it was a perfectly natural Scottish way of speaking.
Clemence added her own thoughts.
‘Dougal, don’t be in too much of a hurry. We shall miss you. You’ve become almost a – a fixture here.’ It was going too far for Clemence to say he’d almost become one of the family.
‘I thought the doctors weren’t too happy about the torn ligaments,’ Angel put in. ‘What use is a soldier whose arm collapses in the midst of firing a rifle?’
Dougal smiled at her. ‘You’ve become so canny, Miss Angel, with your First Aid training! Aye, mebbe ’twould be a mistake to return too soon. But I’ve been here too long, taking advantage of your hospitality. I’m thinking of asking for leave to visit my mother. She’s unwell, and she’s no young any more.’
Angel could see that Louise was dying to say that Dougal hadn’t been here too long at all, but such sentiments would clearly be indiscreet from a young married woman. They had become remarkably attached, but she was quite sure that Louise would never betray her husband. Nor go away to an hotel with a man the way Angel had done with Jacques…
She felt a catch in her throat. There had been a long letter from him at last. A letter that terrified Ange
l. They were now bombing German factories. Flying right over Germany and dropping bombs that destroyed munitions and armaments, and although Jacques’ words were restrained, Angel didn’t need telling how dangerous these missions were.
She prayed for him every night. There were times when she wondered if anybody was listening to her prayers. Her faith was no longer as intense and all-believing as it had been at school. She was questioning the very basis of her upbringing. But what kind of God could allow these terrible things to happen, such needless slaughter and agony? Her own shaky belief was one more thing to appal her.
Before Dougal Mackie could make any enquiries as to his future, the infection in his arm worsened dramatically and he was admitted to hospital in Bristol with a raging fever. Gangrene was suspected, and for several weeks a very real fear of amputation. They all visited him at various times, and Angel guessed that Louise made many more visits than she told the rest of them. Several times Angel thought she could hear her weeping in her bedroom. She wanted to go to her, but knew that Louise’s pride would forestall any such comfort.
At long last the danger of amputation was past, but Dougal was to be discharged from the army. His right arm was not entirely useless, but would never stand up to the rigours of warfare. He came back to Meadowcroft far more subdued than when he left, with a bitterness in his heart that matured his young face considerably. And as soon as he was fit to travel, he was going home to Scotland.
In February, in Europe, there was news of a terrifying new German bombardment of the historic fortress of Verdun in northeast France. The Bannister girls had visited the city once long ago, and could identify with the horrors more readily than in any other newspaper report. The snow was thick on the ground in France now, and the reporters made much of the ‘mincing machine’ of Verdun, where French and Allied men were being cut down by the minute. The once green fields were now a barren wasteland, with only the stumps of trees where lush vegetation had flourished. It was said that the noise of the battles could be heard across the Channel in the southern coastal towns of England as a low rumble resembling an earthquake.
In February, in England, The Honourable Stanley Crabb was blown to bits while inspecting the site for a larger munitions factory on the remnants of an old one, converted from a small cramped button factory. The explanation given for the explosion was that spilled dregs of gunpowder had collected in small pockets when the old building had been pulled down, and some careless newspaper reporter accompanying the military men had inadvertently lit a cigarette and thrown down the match. There were six casualties and one fatality.
Louise wondered what time Clemence and Angel were going to get back for dinner that evening, having gone to meet the ambulance train at Temple Meads. She sat aimlessly at the pianoforte, trying very hard to sort out her muddled feelings on certain matters, when the housekeeper announced the arrival of two gentlemen in uniform.
She turned almost gladly. More billetted men would be a relief, whatever they were like. Their presence may stop her from thinking what a terrible mistake she had made in marrying Stanley to please her mother, and may help to squash these other wicked longings creeping into her mind every single day – the minute she saw the officers, she knew this was a different visitation.
Louise wasn’t normally a hysterical woman. Nevertheless, the village women who came in to help Cook with the kitchen work reported afterwards that it was pitiful to hear that poor Mrs Crabb wailing and carrying on when the officers told her that her husband was dead. Must have thought a lot of him, for all his stuck-up ways. There was no accounting for folk…
Louise wept into her lace-edged handkerchief, sick to her stomach at realising that the feeling she felt most was the most acute, yet appalling sense of relief. The officers cleared their throats and murmured comforting platitudes, one of them daring to put an arm around the grieving young widow and sensing the tautness of her supple body.
Poor young woman, he thought sympathetically. But a handsome one too. Perhaps in time she would find someone to take the place of that pompous Crabb fellow. An officer and a gentleman, Stanley certainly was, but the general opinion of him was that he was the most boring bore in the British army.
Snuffling into her lace handkerchief, Louise couldn’t shake off the image of Stanley being blown to bits. But it was not in the least as the embarrassed officers imagined.
She was seeing Stanley’s arms and legs flying off in four directions. His head shooting upwards, the eyes still slightly surprised and affronted at what was happening, the fleshy mouth hanging open in that stupid vacant way of his. And then there was that other bit in the middle. That ridiculous, flaccid appendage that rarely stood up straight like a little soldier the way it was supposed to, and was probably filling up with pee as it wobbled about, showering everybody around him … Louise, who hardly ever let such coarseness enter her mind, let alone pass her lips, was suddenly giggling wildly at the thought of dear departed Stanley’s penis suddenly having a life of its own and peeing over everything in sight.
‘Whatever’s happening?’ At that moment, Clemence came in from her evening at the railway station, followed by an open-mouthed Angel. The sight of Louise, dear, correct Louise, in the throes of high-pitched laughter and apparently being embraced by a stranger while another looked on, was nothing short of – of scandalous!
‘I’m so sorry, Lady Bannister,’ one of the officers began, when Louise suddenly shrieked at her, tearing herself from the other’s arms.
‘It’s Stanley, Mother. He’s got himself blown up. He’ll be a hero after all, even if it’s only a dead one! Doesn’t that please you, Mother?’
She sounded so much like Ellen as she hurled out the news. Clemence’s face lost all its colour. Louise rushed out of the room, and Angel rushed out after her. The officers looked gravely at Clemence.
‘It’s shock, I’m afraid. It affects people in different ways. It may take a few hours for her to calm down and accept the truth. If I may suggest it, I would send for a doctor right way, Lady Bannister.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course. But please tell me quickly if what my daughter says is true. Is poor dear Stanley really dead?’
The officers managed not to look at one another while they related the facts. Clemence was still listening in horror while her hand reached for the telephone to call the doctor for Louise. In the midst of her shock and sincere grief, she was already planning a splendid funeral. It would be the last thing they could do for Stanley.
No one knew of Sir Fred Bannister’s involvement with the widow of one of his millworkers. While he was in Yorkshire he spent some nights in his hotel and the rest at Harriet’s cottage. Only the hotel manager had Harriet’s telephone number in case of emergencies, and all he knew was that it was a contact number. Better to be safe than sorry, even though he would dearly love to spend all his time with Harriet. All his days and all his nights. To sink himself in her soft warmth and never come out … he said as much to her one cold night in February, when they were snuggled up together in her creaking old bed, and had just spent a glorious hour in the pursuit of happiness.
‘I’m always amazed how good it is with you,’ Fred marvelled. ‘Clemence was always such a cold fish. She used to gaze at the ceiling so much, I swear she could tell you how many flakes of paint there were on it.’
Harriet giggled, nestling more comfortably into his rotund stomach, her hand flat against his buttocks.
‘You’re a wicked old man, Fred, and I love you for it!’
‘I love you too, my Harriet. You keep me sane. But not so much of the old! There’s plenty of life in me yet.’
‘Don’t I know it.’ She smiled in the darkness as he pushed against her, reminding her of his virility. Women such as Clemence Bannister were fools if they didn’t appreciate a man like Fred. She felt no compunction, no guilt, in sharing him. If Clemence didn’t want this lovely man and she did, then so be it. Harriet’s cheerful, simple philosophy ended right there.
The
thin sound of a bell ringing somewhere in the house made Fred swear lustily with words Clemence wasn’t remotely aware that he knew, and wouldn’t recognise if she heard them.
‘Hell and damnation. Just as I was beginning to feel broody again. Who can be calling you on the telephone at this time of night?’
‘I’d better answer, love.’ Harriet slid out of bed, her ample curves rolling slightly. Fred didn’t mind her plumpness. It was fantastic to dig his hands into so much flesh and feel it wrap around you. He had never felt so welcome anywhere in the world as he felt with Harriet. She slipped the warm dressing gown over her nakedness, pushed her feet into her old slippers and padded down the stairs. Fred stretched luxuriously, grinning as the bedsprings creaked again. He liked their creaking. When he and Harriet began cavorting, they sang a joyous song of reunion every bloody time…
He heard her run back up the stairs. She was surprisingly light for a heavy woman. She’d be cold now. He threw back the bedclothes for her to come back to him…
‘Fred, it’s the hotel for you. There’s been an accident. Somebody’s been hurt. You’d best speak to him, love –’
He was already out of bed.
‘Not Angel. Please God, not Angel –’
He hardly knew he’d muttered the words as he ran downstairs, heedless of the cold Yorkshire night and his lack of clothes. He had the bedspread held tightly around him like a Roman toga. Harriet smiled slightly in spite of the anxiety she felt. Naturally, Fred’s first thoughts would be for his Angel, his best-loved daughter. If Harriet had been the jealous sort, she would be jealous of Angel.
It was a while before he came back upstairs. Silently, she handed him his clothes, knowing he must leave her, because this was the price they had to pay.
‘It’s my son-in-law. My stupid, pea-brained son-in-law. Blown to bits inspecting a site for a munitions factory. No one but Stanley could come to such an incongruous end. I’ve telephoned Clemence, and I have to get home. Louise is acting very strangely. They need me, Harriet. I’ll leave some money for the phone call –’
The Bannister Girls Page 14
