The Chestnut Tree

by Charlotte Bingham

  Richards went to the tea urn and poured Rusty a cup, despite her half-hearted protestations. As he did so, Rusty turned her large eyes on Judy.

  ‘You heard about Mrs Eastcott, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I was so sorry.’

  ‘Tried to rescue two young children and their mother from a burning building. What a brave woman. Dad says she will be posthumously awarded with the George Medal, or something.’

  There was a small silence as both Richards and Judy tried to envisage what the or something might encompass. They began again together, ‘Do you think – Mattie will be staying with her father now?’ Judy finished, as Richards added, ‘I was about to ask the same thing, Miss Judy.’

  Rusty shook her head. She had no idea. After a few days’ compassionate leave Mattie had returned to London. Apparently she had been determined to go back, although for how long Rusty was uncertain.

  As to Mr Eastcott, he was still insisting on going on fire watching duties, despite the fact that his wife had just died in one.

  Rusty shook her head again as she once more prepared to leave. ‘I must rush. I’ve been behind all day, I don’t know why.’ As Judy followed her into the hall, she picked up a small potted tree. ‘I have to be with Dad at night, you know. He never sleeps since his accident. I read to him. Very good for me really, not being bookish, but I shan’t be able to do it for much longer. I’m off to work in the munitions factory at Plimpton. With Mum going netting and all sorts, there’s not much for me now at home and I can’t spend the rest of the war reading to him, and running round after him, and nor can Mum. I meant to plant our Mickey’s tree today, and look, I haven’t even done that.’

  She sighed, staring at the tree that she still had a mind to plant by the village green. Mickey had been against it, but now he was gone, well, it seemed as if as long as she could plant it somewhere it would bring him back, because their Mickey, he was such a little daredevil, he would do anything provided it took courage, Mickey would.

  ‘We’ll plant it for you,’ Judy told her, taking the small tree from her. ‘Won’t we, Richards? We’ll take care of it, Rusty. After all, as you know, no one in the village dares counter anything that Richards wants to do, do they, Richards?’

  Richards took the tree from Judy, stroking its leaves as if it was a monkey tree from Kew, or some other rarity, which at that moment, it seemed to him that it might be.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about that, Miss Judy . . .’

  ‘Yes, you do, Richards. With all the men gone, nowadays you run Bexham, and we all know it, even if you don’t.’ Judy loved to tease Richards.

  ‘Well, I must be off. See you when I get back.’

  ‘Take care, Miss Rusty, won’t you?’

  Once he had heard the front door shutting quietly behind her Richards said in a worried voice, ‘I don’t think Miss Rusty realises what she is in for, I mean, after Bexham. I really don’t think she understands what she is in for joining a munitions factory. Dunkirk will be a roller coaster ride compared to life in a factory. Some of the women in there, well, Miss Judy, I hear they’d scare the moustache off a Nazi.’

  But of course, concerned though he might be for Miss Rusty, with Madame Gran gone all Richards really dreamed of was seeing Miss Meggie, alive and well, and safely returned to Bexham. Every night before he indulged in a few hours’ sleep he imagined allowing himself to be hugged by Miss Meggie, before hurrying off down to the cellars and bringing up a bottle of champagne to celebrate. It was all he could really think about, which is why, the following morning, he took Mickey Todd’s tree, now grown to really quite a good height, and went out and planted it on the edge of the village green.

  Perhaps because there was a war on, or because he took care to have one of his friends from the Three Tuns build a protective fence of netting around it, no one thought to question the tree’s sudden appearance. Everyone assumed that someone else knew why it was there, so it stayed where it was, growing slowly, blossoming in good time for spring, and bearing conkers once autumn came.

  Rusty peered round the door at Father seated in front of the fire. He was still awake, if you could call sitting staring in front of him ‘awake’.

  ‘What, still not in bed, Dad?’

  ‘Waiting up for your mother.’

  ‘No, don’t do that, Dad. She could be anywhere at this time of night. Might have gone netting, might have gone fire watching . . . and old Mrs Gardner, she has the measles caught from one of her evacuees, so I know that Mum had a mind to step in for her at the hospital. All sorts and tykes of occupations she could be doing this time of night, and you know it.’

  ‘I’m waiting up for her, until she gets back. God, your face and hands aren’t half a funny colour. You’ll never get a man looking like that.’

  ‘Just going for a wash, Dad, don’t have to tell me. Netting’s filthy work, you know.’ When Rusty came back she picked up a book. ‘If you’re set on staying up I might as well read to you. Now where were we?’

  Her father tried to look vague, as if he did not quite remember where they were, because he never liked to admit to Rusty how much her reading to her old dad meant to him. It settled something inside him, for a few moments anyway. The great black sadness that had come on him after Tom’s not coming back from Dunkirk, it all seemed to seep away once Dad got interested in the adventures of Tom Sawyer, and the descriptions of the great river by which Tom lived. And then there were the marvels of the characters that surrounded Tom. Well, they reminded him of his boyhood in Bexham, and all the old characters who would drink at the Three Tuns, when he was a little lad.

  ‘Chapter Five . . .’

  Before she began Rusty looked across at her father. His legs uncrossed themselves, and his hands came to rest on the sides of his armchair as he heard her voice start to read to him once more. She had noticed that this was the only time he did not twist and turn in his chair, moving restlessly this way and that, as if he was suffering from some sort of ache which would not leave him, which of course he was.

  ‘You don’t have to go and leave us for that munitions place or whatever it is, Rusty, really you don’t.’

  ‘Don’t start, Dad, please. You know we’ve been over all this, time and again. I have to. You know single women can get sent to prison if they’re found without a job nowadays.’

  ‘But you’ve got a job, here in Bexham—’

  ‘A desk job, Dad, that’s something a married woman, anyone, could do. I want to make something to well and truly get back at Jerry for taking all those gallant soldiers of ours, for taking Tom, and Mr Kinnersley.’ She paused, knowing that she should not have mentioned Tom and Mr Kinnersley, but it seemed to her that it was the only way to get her father to understand what she was about now. How she could no longer cope with a desk job that kept her dulled and anxious. She had to do something. ‘Anyway, it’s not munitions or explosives I will be making, I’m not that daft. No, this is balloons. I’m joining the balloon girls. Cheer up, Dad, it’ll bring in money and that, and the factory manager said I had nice neat small hands, perfect for that type of work.’

  ‘Women making bombs and guns and barrage balloons, don’t see it myself.’

  ‘I hate to disappoint you, Dad, but women are better and faster at that kind of thing than you lot.’

  ‘You should have been a boy.’

  ‘I know, I know, now do you want me to get on with the story, or don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, very well. But just you mind out for soldiers at that camp near Plimpton. Don’t want to sell yourself for a pair of nylons, as I hear some are doing.’

  Rusty stared at the book in front of her and sighed the deepest sigh she had sighed yet that day. Just because it was inward, and could not be heard by her father, did not mean that it was not heartfelt. Father was so full of the nonsense he heard at the Three Tuns, girls selling themselves for a pair of nylons, jitterbugging through the night and turning up for factory work as hung over as ten sailors. She sometimes felt th
at the men in the village were more horrified by the fact that it was now compulsory for women to register for war work than they were by the war itself and all the casualties. As far as the men were concerned the worst had happened: women were working and that meant that women were independent, and what was even worse was that the government was behind them. It was a filthy plot, the men both behind and in front of the bar had told Mr Todd, nothing more and nothing less than a filthy plot to free women.

  She started to read to her father, seated beside him in their usual way, while all the time they both knew that they were listening out for her mother. When Rusty at last heard her, her father had long ago fallen asleep to the sound of his daughter’s voice detailing the adventures of Tom Sawyer.

  ‘Where you been? I was so worried, it’s nearly two o’clock, no, nearly half past two, new time.’

  ‘The blackout, Rusty dear. I went up to Cucklington House for a go at the netting, and then on the way back I stopped off.’

  ‘You stopped off, Mum? Don’t tell me at the Three Tuns?’

  Mrs Todd coloured slightly. ‘No – no – I dunno why, no, I dunno why, but I just had a mind suddenly to go to the church and say a prayer for our Mickey, and course when I came out my torch went and had it, didn’t it. Found myself clinging to one gravestone, and then another – well, I thought I’d never see home again, and that was all before I walked into a lamp post and apologised to it!’

  Mickey had run away from home three months before. They had not dared to tell Rusty’s dad. Mrs Todd had thought it would kill her husband, so they had just told him that he had gone off to stay with relatives in Yorkshire. Rusty had even forged a letter from him, which was not that difficult since Mickey’s writing was so bad that her father never bothered to even ask to read the letter, but seemed quite happy for it to be read to him.

  Now her mother’s voice was barely above a whisper, but Rusty was so pleased to see her back safe that she answered her in a normal voice, ‘Well, thank God, you’re home anyway.’

  This woke her father who called out, ‘Who’s there? Rusty? Who’s there?’

  ‘It’s all right, Dad, it’s just Mum home.’

  ‘At this hour!’

  Both women waited, resigned expressions on their faces, knowing only too well what was going to come next.

  ‘You been out jitterbugging with some GI?’

  Every night it was always the same. Rusty turned away. ‘You would honestly have thought he would have got bored with saying that by now, wouldn’t you?’

  Her mother smiled a little hopelessly, knowing that her father’s obsessional behaviour, his inability to rouse himself just a little from his physical collapse, was one of the many reasons that Rusty was leaving home and taking a job in the factory at Plimpton, and she could not really blame her.

  Meanwhile Mattie was saying goodbye to Michael.

  They had parted temporarily in Sussex, but now they both knew in all likelihood they were parting for good, since Michael had been called back to America.

  It was strange, after so much intimacy, after sharing so much love, Mattie’s sudden and terrible grief over her mother’s death, everything – it was strange to find that it was so difficult now to know what to say to each other. The fact was there was nothing to say except ‘goodbye’, but even that was both too small and too big a word for how they were both feeling.

  As she kissed Michael for the last time Mattie knew, without any doubt, that she should tell him that she had, finally, obtained a commitment from him, albeit without his knowledge.

  ‘Can I get in touch with you?’

  ‘Of course, at Bexham, my father’s address.’ It was ridiculous, but she realised suddenly that she had not given him directions, and yet perhaps that was not so ridiculous. ‘I’ll send it to you, soon.’

  ‘No, give it to me now.’

  ‘I haven’t time,’ Mattie lied, turning away from Michael towards the staff car. ‘Just haven’t. And – and Major General Allington is waiting for me, sir, you know how it is . . .’

  ‘Gerry’s always fried, he won’t notice what time you pick him up.’

  ‘No, really, General. So long. We’ll keep in touch. I promise. Somehow.’

  The hurt in Michael’s eyes at her dismissal of him was not reflected in Mattie’s, because she knew what Michael did not, that she would probably always be in touch with a part of him, and in a far more tangible way than via a letter or a card. And anyway, what good were letters and such like when everyone knew that war, and heaven only knew what else, was just about to come between them? Besides, it would be very possible, men being so careless, that his wife might find a letter, and Mattie was the last person to want to hurt his wife, because that would mean she would hurt Michael too, and just at that moment if she was sure of one thing, and one thing alone, it was that there was too much hurt in the world, without adding to it.

  ‘Don’t you know there’s a war on, General?’ she joked, at the same time saluting him smartly, only for him to catch her hand.

  ‘Mattie, please.’

  But it was too late. She shook his hand free of hers, and flung herself behind the driver’s seat. She had lost her mother, she had lost Michael, she just hoped that she could hang on to his baby.

  For a moment Meggie had lain in utter silence, the only noise being the constant swish of the spring crop around her, blown softly by the breeze, a slight wind on which she suddenly heard voices being carried her way, German voices shouting commands and directions as a small army of them poured out of the woods.

  Half standing to try to gain sight of them, Meggie parted the tall stalks and got a good view of the grey-uniformed and helmeted soldiers as they stood in a broken line surveying the crop fields and the landscape beyond. There were about twenty or so men, Meggie reckoned, having made a quick head count, led by one officer who had just emerged from the copse on the eastern end of the line. One of his men suddenly shouted, pointing at the same time to something west of them, movement it seemed in the grain, so Meggie gathered from what they were shouting. The next thing she knew shots rang out. Then more shots and more shouts as some of the soldiers were despatched after what could be their quarry.

  Meggie dropped at once back to the ground, not daring to crawl either forwards or backwards lest the soldiers caught sight of her as well. Looking over her shoulder she knew she had left a telltale path of entry into the field, and she also knew there was nothing she could do about it, other than hope none of the soldiers decided to come this way. For a long, precious moment it seemed that her wish had come true as all she could hear were the voices of her enemies growing ever more distant as the chase went westwards. There were several more shots fired, then silence – more or less. Silence apart from what Meggie now realised was the sound of footfalls behind her.

  She lay with her face pressed as hard as she could against the cold earth, her whole body flattened into the ground in fact, as if she was trying to bury herself. She knew there was someone there, but she could not look round. She really did not want to look into whoever’s eyes it was, as they shot her.

  More silence followed. No more footfalls, just utter silence – until a slow click, the sound of a revolver being cocked, or the safety catch coming off a pistol. Unable to bear the suspense any more, Meggie all at once rolled over, deciding that perhaps it might be best to brazen it out with her captor, to look him in the eye.

  He was standing not a yard from her, smart as paint in his captain’s uniform, and almost absurdly good-looking. Not the traditional Teutonic blond, Meggie had time to notice as she lay on her back staring up into his face, but a tall dark-eyed, dark-haired man, looking at her.

  ‘Hello,’ Meggie said in her perfect French. ‘Lovely day for a picnic.’

  His gun was pointed not at her heart but at her head, which Meggie did not consider very gentlemanly.

  ‘If you’re about to shoot me,’ she continued, ‘I’d rather it was in the chest rather than mess up these
features of mine, which I have often been assured are really rather fine.’

  Her captor said nothing. His face showed absolutely no expression as he blinked slowly, before obeying her orders and lowering his gun in line with her heart.

  ‘Don’t you speak French? Would you rather I spoke German?’

  ‘I speak French, thank you,’ the German replied in equally impeccable French.

  ‘Fine,’ Meggie replied. ‘Then why are you hesitating? Or don’t you have the nerve to shoot a woman in cold blood?’

  The officer held his gun rock steady, pointing at Meggie’s thumping, racing heart. ‘Why aren’t you frightened?’

  ‘Probably because I’ve never died before. If I had, perhaps I would be.’

  ‘I haven’t seen you,’ the captain told her, finally, lowering his voice and replacing his revolver in his holster.

  Meggie stared back at him, suspecting a trick. ‘So what am I meant to do now?’ she wondered, still not daring to move.

  The German officer pursed his mouth while he thought, before looking across the fields in the direction of his troops.

  ‘At the north end of the village,’ he said, ‘there is a large, red-bricked house with a broken white front gate. The house is empty. You’ll be perfectly safe there.’

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘That depends on you, Fräulein.’

  ‘On me?’

  ‘Entirely. You will be perfectly safe in this house, Fräulein. You have my word. Just wait fifteen minutes, and then go. But if you try to go anywhere else, you will not succeed. The area is crawling with our soldiers. You would not get another hundred yards.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure.’

  The captain suddenly smiled. Their eyes met and held for a brief moment, then the officer inclined his head to her once more in a half bow, before straightening himself up in answer to a distant call from one of his men.

  ‘No!’ he shouted in his native tongue. ‘Nothing at all! There is no one here! They must have all gone the same way!’

  Then he was gone, quickly and as quietly as he had arrived, leaving Meggie, her heart still pounding with the impact of having faced death and somehow, heaven only knew how, having got off.