The Chestnut Tree

by Charlotte Bingham

  By the time the last stroke had sounded the big hand of the great clock had swung to one minute past midnight. Europe was once more at peace. At the same time everyone clapped their hands, firecrackers exploded and down the river tugs sounded their whistles and boats blew their steam-horns to celebrate the moment when the world returned to its senses.

  The next thing Judy knew was that she was in John’s arms and being kissed, but as she stepped back and away from him she realised that – unlike everything else that was happening around them – their kiss had not set the Thames on fire. Whatever happened, John was still not Walter.

  Richards burst through the doors of the long sitting room. ‘Miss Meggie is coming home to us! Miss Meggie is coming home, Gwen.’

  Richards and Gwen from Shelborne had decided to go into business together. They had evolved their plan one evening when sheltering under the stairs during a particularly nasty doodlebug incident, and as a result, while Mrs Tate and young Dauncy had been living with Miss Judy at Owl Cottage, they had become the sole occupants of Cucklington House, while making sure to look after Shelborne for the Tates.

  ‘Mrs Walter Tate will be pleased to have her friend back, won’t she? What with her husband missing, and that, she’ll have company again.’

  Richards nodded, although not quite agreeing. It had already become apparent to him, and others in the village, that the people returning from the war, from whatever occupations, were not the same people who had gone away. Quiet, shy boys returned alcoholic braggarts, restrained young ladies returned chain-smoking neurotics, brave, handsome men came back with their nerves so shattered that the slightest sound made them jump. He doubted very much that Miss Meggie, after all her experiences in the war – and only God and she knew just what they had entailed – would return the same young woman as the one who had volunteered so cheerfully to be sent to somewhere in Europe.

  After his hero’s welcome back to Bexham, Peter had returned to his convalescent home for some months, before being discharged and returning to the village for good. Slowly and carefully setting about putting his garage to rights, and after all the excitement, he suddenly seemed a lonely figure, up on the hill, a new dog at his heels, but both his parents now dead, his father killed in a bombing raid, his mother dying of a heart attack. Not only that but there were really only a handful of cars in the village to service, so trade was slow.

  Knowing all this, as soon as she could get herself organised Mattie had asked him round to dinner at Magnolias.

  ‘Just quietly, at home,’ she said, trying not to notice the almost pathetic gratitude in Peter’s eyes as he accepted, and she quickly pushed Max back down to the village.

  Lionel was out, and as Mattie busied herself making the best supper she could muster, she wondered how she was going to tell Peter everything that had happened in his absence, and whether he would even wish to know. She knew she would have to tell him about herself and Michael, she knew she would have to tell him about Rusty, but just how was quite another thing. When he arrived he was carrying a bottle of gin, which boded either well or ill for the evening, depending which way you viewed it, and how much you liked gin.

  ‘Not too strong, Peter.’

  Peter ignored her plea, and gaily poured them both two huge gins. Topping them up with only a little bit of water, he sat back.

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  There followed the awkward silence that always falls when there have been such great changes in people’s lives that they really do not know where to begin, or even whether to begin at all.

  ‘I—’ They both began with the same word, laughed, and promptly, not knowing how to go on, took far too large sips at their drinks. Then Peter cleared his throat.

  ‘The thing is, Mattie – I wonder if you’ve seen Rusty Todd, Mattie?’

  He had not meant to say ‘Mattie’ twice, but he had made up his mind, long before the evening arrived, to get straight to the point, and as soon as he could. He could not believe that Rusty had disappeared off the face of the earth or that no one in the village, but no one, knew where she had gone, least of all her parents.

  ‘Not lately,’ Mattie lied. ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s just that I – er – I wanted to see her, but whenever I call at her parents’ house they seem most reluctant to even talk about her. Is she – I mean – I can take it – is she dead, Mattie? Is Rusty dead?’

  ‘Good gracious no! No, of course not! Why ever would you think that? Dead, Rusty? No, gracious, no, Peter. No, Rusty is far from dead.’

  ‘Thank God for that.’ Peter lay back against the sofa, his eyes closed, and then he leaned forward and put a strong hand on Mattie’s arm. ‘It’s just that no one in the village would talk about her – every time I asked after her, whoever I asked, they just turned away. It was as if they could not bring themselves to tell me she was dead.’

  ‘No, Rusty’s not dead, Peter, far from it.’

  ‘In that case, Mattie, please, please tell me where she is. Everyone is carrying on as if she has been sent to prison, and they’re too ashamed to talk about her, or she has committed suicide, or done something they think shameful.’

  ‘Do you really want to get in touch with Rusty?’

  ‘Want to get in touch with Rusty? I’m in love with Rusty, Mattie, and that’s not the gin talking, if you don’t mind my being so honest. No, I want so much to see her it hurts me to even say her name, and that is still not the gin talking. But – I mean – I think she must know I’m home, if she’s still living round here,’ he went on awkwardly, ‘what with the welcome I got, and all, so I think the reason she hasn’t got in touch with me is . . .’ He nodded at his missing leg. ‘You know. My leg. I mean, girls don’t like half men, do they?’

  Mattie stared at him, and against her will her eyes suddenly filled with tears. Life had so changed everyone – no, not life – war. The war had so changed everyone.

  ‘Oh no, Peter, your leg is certainly not the reason Rusty has not got in touch with you, I can tell you that for certain. The reason she has not got in touch with you, Peter, is because she’s had a baby, and she doesn’t want anyone to know, although of course everyone does. You know the village, they don’t speak about such things, keep themselves to themselves about such matters. Bexham after all is still Bexham, Peter.’

  Peter stared at Mattie. ‘She’s had a baby.’ He paused. ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘Her parents aren’t ashamed of her, I mean they’re not like that, the Todds, but they have to respect her wishes. It’s Rusty who’s ashamed, Peter, that’s why she moved villages to have it, to have the baby. And that is why she has stayed where she is, because she doesn’t want to face people with her baby. I understand, but I’m probably the only person who does. You see, I had a baby, as you know, and if my father hadn’t been so sweet about it, I dare say I might have run off somewhere else. But also – I happen to know the father of my baby is married, but Rusty – well, I think it’s different for her. The father of her baby is not married; she just doesn’t want him to be put in a position that he might not like – to think that he had to marry her. That would be awful. And I understand that too.’

  ‘Who is the father, Mattie?’

  ‘You’ll have to ask her that yourself, Peter.’

  The following day, armed with the address given to him by an understanding Mattie, Peter made his way to the village indicated, found the cottage which Rusty was renting, and slipped in the side gate of the front garden. He was in such a state that he could hardly see, and when he did look down the old brick path, past the innumerable cottage flowers and vegetables set out in traditional style, through to the back garden – a short strip of lawn, its boundary bordered by another cottage – Peter thought his heart might stop.

  She was wearing a dress he did not recognise, hanging out the washing on a line filled with nothing but baby clothes. The baby himself, dressed in a pale blue romper suit with yellow ducks embroidered across the front, was s
itting up in a smart blue harness looking round at the world with that particular confident look that babies always assume when they know very well that they are not just the delight but the total centre of their mother’s lives.

  With Rusty’s back still turned to him, and with so many napkins still to pin up as she quietly hummed to herself, Peter took courage and limped slowly up to the pram.

  As he stared into the little fellow’s face, and held one of his hands, he knew that he had no real need to ask Rusty for the name of the father of her baby – their baby. He was not just Peter’s son, he was Peter’s image, with one notable exception – his vibrantly red curly hair.

  Judy was also hanging out washing in the garden of Owl Cottage, but it was of a very different kind. Her washing was sheets and towels, all of which seemed intent on wrapping themselves around her at the most unexpected moments.

  Now that Loopy and Dauncy had gone back to Shelborne, now that she was alone once more in the cottage, now that John had at last realised that not only was there nothing between them, but there never would be, putting out sheets to dry on a sunny day seemed like the most idyllic occupation imaginable. Judy was alone at last, for the first time for what seemed like years, alone to think about Walter, imagine what their life might have been like, had he survived the war. He had been studying law before he joined the Navy. Soon he would have been catching the train to London, going to take up some brief, eating dinners, which barristers and such people always seemed to spend so much time doing, coming back on the train, and telling her all about it, while she set the small oak dining table with some pleasantly light supper, both of them settling down to listen to the wireless afterwards – perhaps a concert, or a comedy half hour.

  Judy struggled to subdue a particularly recalcitrant sheet, thinking what a paradise it would have been, and how she would have loved every minute of it. It might be wrong, but now that she was alone again she had taken to hugging this imaginary life of hers to her, their life as it might have been, hers and Walter’s, had not the war come between it and them.

  Loopy was getting used to being at Shelborne again. At first she had been afraid that going back to the house would bring back all those agonising memories of life before the war, of Walter saying goodbye, of her going to pieces, of Dauncy striving valiantly to cope with her. And with all that would come the old temptation to lose herself in alcohol, to take to her bed, to shut off from real life and her responsibilities. But, whether because of Dauncy, and the pure unaffected joy he evinced as he burst through the door of his old home, or because of Hugh’s evident content on retiring from London, Hugh and Dauncy’s enthusiasm carried her through those first, strange days of peace. Besides, she was determined to be positive. She at once made plans. She would change the covers in the sitting room. She would somehow or other obtain paint to redecorate, she would grow vegetables, she would plant flowers if she could get the seeds.

  Only the piano remained silent.

  It had never been played since Walter had gone missing, and in deference to the intensity of Loopy’s feelings Hugh had always imagined he might never play it again. He would definitely never play Gilbert and Sullivan – least of all HMS Pinafore. He had long ago resigned himself to the idea that the gaiety of those pre-war days was gone for ever.

  Until one afternoon, not long after they had settled back into Shelborne, Loopy, seated alone in the back garden, the sound of the sea not far away, suddenly got up and went back into the house, through the French windows and into the sitting room, calling for her husband.

  Hugh, busy clearing out the garage, and making plans to take his car off its blocks, and somehow get it up the hill again to Peter Sykes, called back to his wife, ‘Coming, darling! Just coming!’

  Loopy’s voice had not sounded so happy, so light and filled with something that he could not put his finger on since before the war. Hugh at once stopped what he was doing, and went to her, still wiping his hands on an old striped bathing towel, a towel with a Scottie dog embroidered on it. Standing stock still in the middle of the sitting room, staring at him, Loopy remembered that Walter had always loved to bag that towel after swimming.

  Bags I that towel. Bags I Scottie!

  But for some reason the memory of the young Walter, shivering from the cold of the sea, his bright eyes looking up into hers as she towelled him, no longer hurt her. She stared at Hugh wordlessly for a second or two, the realisation coming to her that it was as if she herself had been very cold, and now she was getting warm – really warming up; realising that the memory of Walter, of the towel, of bathing off their boat, of picnics held in inlets, of the little boats the boys were always making to float in the bath upstairs, did not hurt her any longer.

  ‘Hugh. Tonight. Will you – do you think you could play the piano for me? Play the piano again tonight, Hugh, for Dauncy especially. I know he would like it.’

  Hugh stared back at his wife, realising with shock and delight that standing once more before him was his old Loopy. Gone was the gaunt woman with the strained expression, the suffering woman who had lain for weeks upstairs, the woman who had left their house to go and live with Judy, as if by being near his wife of only a few hours she would be closer to Walter. Here, standing before him once more, was his Loopy. She smiled and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Oh, and Hugh – let’s make some dry martinis. I found some gin and vermouth I had hidden in the cellars when I was intent on drinking myself to death – and there’s quite some left!’

  Hugh took her in his arms. Not only was she Loopy again, she was more than that, she was whole again.

  That night Hugh played the piano, badly in need of tuning though it was after so much time.

  Of course he did not dare to play anything from Gilbert and Sullivan – until, that is, Loopy touched him on the shoulder. Looking up into her kind, expressive eyes, into the face that he so loved, he found her smiling down at him, understanding only too well what he was not playing, and why.

  ‘It’s OK, Hugh, you can play Gilbert and Sullivan, you can even play Walter’s song.’

  ‘I don’t know that I should . . .’

  ‘No, you can. You can play it, because you may not know, but I do. You see, I was sitting in the garden shelling peas, and suddenly, I don’t know why, but I knew that it was all right to play Walter’s bedtime song again.’

  Dauncy, in the kitchen attempting to make a chocolate pudding for dessert out of cocoa, a few eggs and butter that Gwen had managed to scrounge for him, turned.

  ‘Crumbs,’ he said to Captain, his new puppy. ‘Father’s not played that since . . . you know.’ He started to hum along with the sound of the piano and his father’s voice, once more singing, ‘We sail the ocean blue, and our saucy ship’s a beauty . . .’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Richards had never been more worried about Miss Meggie than when she asked to borrow his razor. That she had returned from what he now described to Gwen somewhat euphemistically as ‘Miss Meggie’s foreign experiences’ skinny, hollow-eyed and with a chain-smoking habit was hardly surprising.

  Knowing that it would be against all the rules if he should try to ask Miss Meggie for any details of the missing years, Richards had promptly set about trying to feed her up, and although she had hardly touched her food to begin with, after the first few days he had found, hearteningly, that he was returning to the pantry with less on the plates than when he had left it, which was, although not much, at least something.

  ‘I went all through this with her grandmother, Mrs Gore-Stewart, after the Great War, believe me. We always had this sympathy for each other, with her saving my leg, and both liking to play the piano, and Chopin, and that. So, right from the start, it was me that was able to tempt her appetite back with little morsels, and chats and things. That and walking, and sea air. In fact that’s why she bought this place, for the sea air, doing her so much good after all she had endured at the Front.’

  ‘Oh, it must have.’

  Gw
en, who was much younger than Richards, looked sympathetic, and attentive, which was one of the many reasons why Richards found her such a boon to have around him. Not just her apple cheeks and comely figure, but her attentive manners, so hard to find nowadays.

  ‘See, it’s not at the time that you suffer, Gwen.’ Richards breathed on a piece of silver and then rubbed it with his special silver cloth. ‘No, there is no time for that, not at the time. It’s afterwards. That’s when I saw what had happened to Madame Gran, but then of course Miss Meggie being left with her, that was nothing but a boon, although it did not appear as such at the beginning, as I am sure you appreciate, what with Miss Meggie being such a firecracker. But a young thing about the place, it’s a wonderful distraction, really it is, and so Miss Meggie proved to be to Madame Gran.’

  Walks by the sea, walks on the downs, walks to the Three Tuns, walks to the shops, had all been part of Richards’s recipe for getting Miss Meggie back to her old self, that and people coming to see them at Cucklington House. Even now there was some talk of Miss Meggie trying to get Miss Mattie together with the eldest Tate boy; all that had seemed as though it might bring Miss Meggie back to the real world.

  Endless chat about shortages, and how best to make things like marmalade. Everything was aired with himself and his new business partner Gwen. Everything from the problems of trying to get the hens to lay more eggs to the difficulties of finding new tyres for your motor car. The real, if petty, things that keep most human beings jogging along in some sort of fashion.