‘Not much,’ Barbara admitted. ‘I was in a rush.’
So they made a big pot of tea and scrambled up some powdered egg and settled down to talk politics among the newspapers just like old times. Sis was full of plans for a political meeting at Bellington South.
‘There’s got to be more supporters there than we seen at that meeting,’ she said. ‘I mean, that stands to reason. Mr Craxton’s gonna suggest we call a public meeting. He says he’ll propose it on Tuesday week. Week today. Why don’tcher come with us? Be a nice evening out for you.’
So it was agreed. And they went on reading the papers. And Sis found an article about the new prefabricated house. ‘Look at that,’ she said. ‘Just up your street. In every sense a’ the word.’
Engineering experts, the paper said, were being released from airfield work within the next few months to switch to preparing roads and drainage systems for building sites. ‘In the first two years after the end of the European war, there are plans to build up to 300,000 houses – 100,000 in the first year and 200,000 more in the second.’
‘You’ll be in your pre-fab before you know where you are,’ Sis promised.
Yes, Barbara thought, happily. I shall. The war’ll be over, an’ he’ll be home, an’ we’ll have a place of our own right away from everybody, an’ all this silly nonsense will be put in proportion. Oh I can’t wait. It wouldn’t be hard to keep occupied in the meantime, not when there was so much going on.
Sis looked at the clock and gave a squawk. ‘Land-sakes! Look at the time! We’d better look sharp or we’ll be late.’
So they went their separate ways to work. And the spring sun shone on them both. ‘See you next Tuesday!’ they called to one another.
But that Tuesday didn’t turn out the way they expected.
Barbara passed the rest of the week in almost the way she’d planned. She worked afternoons and evenings until her day off on Sunday, which she spent with Sis, and by Monday morning, when she returned to the day shift, she and Heather had established a speechless truce that didn’t require either of them to communicate beyond a simple good morning. Heather cooked the breakfast, Barbara made the tea and washed the dishes, and as it was washday, she washed her clothes too, by hand, and hung them in the garden before she left for work. And that evening she and the two girls went to the pictures and then sat talking until it was very late so that she came home after Heather had gone to bed.
Bob had sat up to see her in, but tactful soul that he was, he didn’t say anything about the way she was behaving. He simply asked her what the picture’d been like, and hoped she’d enjoyed it.
She kissed him goodnight, glad of his discretion and unaware that he was secretly wondering how much longer she and Heather would keep up their quarrel. Neither of them could have foreseen that it would come to a conclusion the very next morning.
They were eating their silent breakfast when Mrs Connelly called up the stairs. ‘I’ve a letter for you, Barbara, so I have. Shall I be bringing it up to you?’
There was something so strained about her voice that Barbara left the table at once to go and see what was the matter. She met the old lady halfway up the stairs and one look at the envelope in her hands told her the worst. It was an official letter. OHMS. The sort that brought bad news.
She opened it where she stood and pulled out the letter, heart thudding and hands shaking. ‘Oh dear God! Dear God!’
Bob and Heather were on the landing, leaning over the stairwell, alarmed and anxious. ‘What is it?’
‘He’s missing,’ Barbara said, and as she moved her head to look up at them she began to cry.
Heather ran down the stairs so precipitately it was a wonder she didn’t fall, grabbed at the letter and read it aloud. ‘Oh my Steve!’ she cried. ‘My poor dear Steve. It’s not true!’
But the words were inescapable. ‘Missing in action.’ There was even a date.
Bob tried to comfort them, his face strained. ‘It don’t say killed,’ he pointed out. ‘Missin’ ain’t killed. It just means they don’t know where he is.’
‘They didn’t know where our Betty was either,’ Heather said wildly, ‘an’ look what had happened to her.’
It was too much for Barbara, for wasn’t that exactly what she was thinking herself? She knew if she stayed in that claustrophobic stairwell a moment longer she’d be screaming. She had to get away. ‘Work,’ she said, struggling past them all. ‘I got to go to work.’
‘Is that a good idea?’ Bob asked, putting a hand on her arm. ‘I mean …’
But she shook him off, pushed on up the stairs, grabbed her red coat from its hook on the bedroom door, snatched up her handbag and ran headlong down again and out of the house. Work! It was the only thing.
But for once in her life keeping busy didn’t help her. Her anxiety was so extreme and her fear so terrible that it was as if the news had punched a hole right through the centre of her body. Every time she thought of him, or remembered the letter, her heart dropped down and down into the pit. Missing. Like Betty. Blown to pieces and never found. She tried to be sensible, to persuade herself that missing didn’t mean dead, but the most she could hope was that he might be injured somewhere and that they might find him. And imagining him wounded brought back all those awful memories of the dead and injured lying in these streets and bits of body falling from the sky. Oh please God, not that! Not that!
Barbara cooked her usual meal that evening, although none of them had the appetite for it. They sat round the table saying the same useless things over and over again without comforting one another in the least. ‘Missing don’t mean killed.’ ‘We’ll just have to hang on and wait, won’t we.’ ‘Mustn’t give up.’
‘I told Sis and Mabel,’ Heather said as they were clearing the table. ‘They came into the shop. Sis says not to worry about the meeting if you don’t feel up to it.’
Barbara looked at the clock, checking the time. She’d forgotten all about the meeting. ‘Thass all right,’ she said, sadly. ‘I’ll go. That’ll give me something to think about.’
‘They’ll understand if you don’t want to,’ Bob said.
But Barbara felt she had to go. Life didn’t stop because you were worried. There were things to do.
Sis was waiting at the bus stop with all the rest of the committee except Mr Craxton.
‘You all right?’ she asked, giving Barbara a hug. But although Barbara nodded, she couldn’t smile and she couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘Don’t give up heart,’ Sis advised, still cuddling her. ‘Missing could mean any number a’ things. Try not to think the worst, eh.’
‘I can’t think of anything. Thass like a nightmare.’
‘I know,’ Sis said, her round face wrinkled with concern. ‘I know.’
Christine was preoccupied, fidgeting from foot to foot, gazing down the street. ‘I hope Mr Craxton’s OK,’ she said. ‘It isn’t like him to be late.’
Barbara didn’t care if he was. He was the least of her worries that evening. But the others said they were sure he’d turn up and the two Union men declared that they’d never known him miss a meeting. Ever. Regular as clockwork he was. But there was still no sign of him when their bus arrived.
‘What are we to do?’ Christine asked, as it juddered to a halt beside them. ‘Are we to go without him or what?’
‘We’ll go on ahead,’ Sis decided, shepherding her into the bus. ‘No point in all of us being late. He’ll follow on.’
But at that moment she saw a woman running down the street towards them, calling to her, a short stout woman with bottle-blonde hair. ‘Mrs Tamworth! Cecily Tamworth!’ And she turned, with one foot on the pavement and the other on the platform and waited for her.
‘I’m so glad I caught you,’ the woman said, breathlessly. ‘It’s Mr Craxton. Oh dear! I don’t know how to tell you this. I’m his niece, Joan. I’m afraid he can’t come. He’s ill.’
They were all alarmed. ‘How ill?’ Sis said. ‘Wha
t is it?’
The answer was a shock. ‘He’s had a heart attack. He’s in hospital.’
They stood where they were, some on the pavement, some on the platform, staring at her. ‘Is he very bad?’ Sis asked.
‘Well he ain’t going to die, if that’s what you mean, not according to the doctor, but he won’t be standin’ for Parliament, that’s for sure. He’s got to take things easy. They ain’t even sure about the shop.’
The conductor had walked down the bus to see what was causing the hold-up. ‘You gettin’ on or off, lady?’ he said to Sis.
‘Off,’ Sis told him. ‘We’ll catch the next one.’ And she and the committee returned to the pavement so that they could give their full attention to Mr Craxton’s niece.
‘Came on all of a sudden,’ she told them. ‘We thought it was indigestion. Mrs C gave him Rennies.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Sis said.
And Christine asked, ‘How is he now?’
‘Not good. They got to watch him for twenty-four hours in case he has another one.’
They were still questioning and commiserating when the next bus came round the bend.
‘We’d better go now,’ Sis said. ‘Thanks for lettin’ us know. Give him our love. Tell him not to worry. An’ say I’ll come up an’ see him tomorrow.’
‘My word!’ Christine said, when they were all on the bus and settled into their seats. ‘Poor Mr Craxton! Who’d have thought it? What will they do at Bellington South?’
What indeed? To be without a candidate with the election so close was, as Pauline said she hardly needed to point out, ‘a real blow’. She looked round at their concerned faces, as they sipped coffee from her elegant bone china and spread their files and papers across her elegant polished table. ‘It’s a bombshell,’ she said. ‘Here I’ve been thinking we were going to plan our first public meeting in years – he wrote to me about it only last week and we thought what a good idea it was – and now this.’
‘What are we to do?’ the schoolteacher asked.
‘Oh dear, Brian,’ Pauline said. ‘I really don’t know.’
‘You’ll have to choose someone else,’ Sis told her.
‘Choosing was the problem in the first place,’ Pauline said. ‘We thought and thought, you know, and there’s absolutely nobody. It’s a big commitment and we’re all such busy people. The Coome Mertons would be the ideal people, naturally, but they’ve always got so many business matters to attend to – they send their apologies, incidentally.’
The librarian stirred his coffee and hastened to assure them all that he’d be only too glad to offer his services, ‘but working the hours I do, I’d really be too much of a liability. You need someone absolutely reliable.’ The old man in spats excused himself on the grounds that he was really a little too long in the tooth. The teacher admitted, modestly, that he was good at public speaking but doubted whether he could carry off a parliamentary candidature. ‘If push comes to shove, I’ll weigh in but I’d rather you found someone else.’
In her present fragile state, Barbara was irritated by the way they were taking the news. Not a word about poor old Mr Craxton, she thought, and what a lily-livered lot they are. Whass the matter with them? I bet they’d stand quick enough if they thought there was any chance of getting elected. The longer the excuses went on, the more irritated she became. In the end she was stung to speak.
‘I tell you what I think,’ she said, at a pause in their catalogue of excuses.
They turned polite faces towards her.
‘You’re lookin’ for someone with commitment. Thass right, hain’t it?’ It was. They were agreed on that. ‘A good public speaker.’ Oh yes, that was essential. ‘Someone who knows the facts an’ can put them across.’ Indeed. ‘Strong socialist. Fighter. Good personality.’
‘You are describing the ideal candidate, my dear,’ the spatted gentleman said, smiling at her paternally. ‘Would we could find him.’
‘That hain’t a him,’ Barbara told him, ‘thass a her. You got the ideal candidate sittin’ right here in this room. She don’t miss a trick. There hain’t a thing she don’t know about this area. She got files an’ folders on every subject under the sun. If any on us wants information, she’s the one we go to.’ She looked round at her fellow committee members, who’d worked out who she was talking about and were grinning at her and nodding. ‘Hain’t that right? Well then, I’d like to propose Mrs Cecily Tamworth. Any seconders?’
The proposal caused such a stir that for a second she was afraid she’d gone too far, too soon. But then all five members of her committee raised their hands in support and Sis laughed out loud and thwacked her on the shoulder. The spatted gentleman was nodding, the teacher looked perky, the librarian was clapping his hands, and Pauline, who’d been startled at first, changed her mind when she saw what a positive reaction she was getting.
‘Would you consider it, Mrs Tamworth?’ she asked.
‘If you’re sure you know what you’re letting yourselves in for,’ Sis said, ‘and on mature consideration, yes I would.’
After that, the meeting became quite light-hearted. And very busy. Sis showed them all the material she’d been gathering about the planned National Health Service and outlined the sort of thing she’d like to see in their local literature, ‘providing I’m accepted by the party’. By the time they parted company late in the evening, they’d organised another local meeting, planned their public meeting, designed leaflets to advertise both of them, and costed the entire enterprise.
‘An inspired proposal,’ Pauline said to Barbara as they parted. ‘I wish the Coome Mertons had been here to see it.’
Sis chuckled about it all the way home, puffing a cigar and wheezing with smoke and delight.
‘You’re a case,’ she said to Barbara, as they parted at the top of Childeric Road. ‘I never thought you’d spring something like that on me.’
‘I wouldn’t have done if I hadn’t been worried about Steve. I just couldn’t sit there an’ hear them makin’ all those silly excuses an’ him …’
Sis grew serious at once. ‘No good telling you not to worry,’ she said. ‘I know that. But, like I said, don’t face the worst until you have to. Missin’ don’t always mean dead. Keep your pecker up.’
Barbara kissed her goodbye and said she’d try but she knew it would be impossible. Just the thought of going back into the house where his parents would be sitting up worrying was making her heart drop into the pit again. But in fact, as she discovered when she got in, both her in-laws were in bed and she had the place to herself.
She crept away into Steve’s bedroom, and eased into his bed, lying on her side with her head on his pillow, looking at the three neat lines of his books in the moonlight, remembering him. It had been a terrible day and an extraordinary evening and she was very, very tired. But she couldn’t sleep.
After a couple of hours, she gave up trying and sat up and switched on the light. She was desperate for someone to talk to, someone who would listen and understand what she was saying, someone who spoke her language. Sis was a dear but she was too caught up in her politics, Mr Wilkins was grieving as much as she was herself and so was Mrs Wilkins, to give her credit. But as she sat there, with her arms round her knees, listening to the sounds of the sleeping house – somebody snoring downstairs, bedsprings creaking, timbers shrinking and cracking the way they used to do in Lynn – she suddenly remembered her aunt Becky. That was it! She’d write a letter to Aunt Becky. At one remove, it would be possible to say everything she wanted to. Aunt Becky could take it.
It was another hour before the letter was written but then she slept at last, and the next morning, although she was very tired, she felt she was able to cope. Breakfast was horribly difficult because they were all in such a state but they got through it, somehow or other, and then there was the bustle of clearing the table and washing the dishes, and then at last she could leave them and go to work. It was a relief to be on her own again and another to p
ost her letter.
Becky Bosworth was setting off to the baker’s when the letter arrived but when she’d read it, she decided the bread could wait and walked straight round to Maudie’s place to tell her the news, her sharp face dark with distress.
Maudie was standing on her doorstep gossiping with Vera Castlemain.
‘He done marvellous up in Lunnon,’ Vera was bragging. ‘He got hisself a new job. Did I tell you? With a di’mond merchant. Imagine that. ’Course I always knew he’d get on. Even as a little lad. He was so brainy. Well you remember how brainy he was. Never thought he’d get a job with a di’mond merchant, though. Never in a thousand years. You think of the money he’ll make.’
Maudie was very impressed. ‘Always knew he’d do well,’ she said. ‘Thass a great pity he didn’t marry our Barbara, if you ask me. They’d ha’ made a good pair. When he cornin’ up to see you then?’
‘Not yet awhile,’ Vera admitted. ‘He say he got to stay on guard. Every evenin’ he say. ’Course with di’monds I s’pose they got to watch out for thieves. Stand to reason.’
Becky breezed into their conversation and pushed it to a halt. ‘You seen this, have you?’ she said to Maudie. ‘You heard the news?’
Maudie took the letter and read it slowly, at first with interest and then with growing distress. ‘Oh my dear heart alive!’ she said. ‘My poor Bar’bra. That hain’t fair! What a thing to go an’ happen!’
‘Shall you go up an’ see her then?’ Becky asked.
‘That ol’ boat’s a-comin’ in,’ Maudie said, frowning to be caught between two needs. ‘Aspected this marnin’. Don’t want him hollerin’. He ain’t axactly in the best of moods. Leastways he weren’t when he set off. Reckon I’ll write to her.’
Vera was looking puzzled. ‘Whass goin’ on?’ she asked, her round face perplexed. ‘Who you gonna write to?’
‘Becky’ll tell you,’ Maudie said. ‘Hassen you up an’ get home or you’ll hev the boat come in an’ you won’t be ready.’ She turned to Becky, holding up the letter. ‘Can I keep this fer a day or two, while I’m writing?’
Avalanche of Daisies Page 35
