She said, digging out from somewhere a gentleness which she felt really too tired to produce, ‘Lady Margaret, you’re too good to be fiddling about with bits of wool, just look at how hard you worked for the cause. You thrived under it, didn’t you, and now you have no direction. We need you. We need every woman we can find to help out, and I don’t mean just to read to the men but to work.’ She lifted her head and looked directly at Lady Margaret.
‘Work? What would my mother say, not to mention my father?’
Evie looked around the room. ‘Your mother and father? I don’t see them here, and what did they say when you were in prison, what did they say when you arrived here? I didn’t see them rushing to help you. Where are the letters that they’ve written? I haven’t noticed any.’ The gentleness had faded.
When she had disentangled all the wool and wound it into a ball, she left to continue her shift which would last until two in the morning, saying, ‘Think about it, Lady Margaret. Choose your area, but choose one. Bank up the fire before you leave, if you feel you can start tonight. I’ll be in the kitchen, so come and tell me what you’d like to do.’
Within an hour Lady Margaret appeared, with her hair brushed and in a bun for the first time since she became unwell. ‘I don’t know what I want to do but perhaps I can start here, while I find out. At least I can learn how to make a cup of tea, if nothing else.’
She stood at Evie’s elbow as they answered the calls for broth for yet another fresh intake that had arrived, this time from Folkestone. It was as the two of them, pausing for a moment, climbed up the back steps into the yard for some crisp fresh midnight air that Evie thought she saw Millie disappear round the corner and down the path running along the walled vegetable garden. What on earth was she playing at, she should be in the laundry room? Evie hurried to the corner, memories of Millie’s meetings with Roger surfacing, but there was no sign of her on the path. Well, it was probably a trick of the light and she would be in the laundry room. She was too tired to think straight, let alone see straight.
Lady Margaret was smoking at the top of the steps, watching her. ‘Is everything all right, Evie?’ she called.
Evie replied, ‘Yes, I just thought I saw someone I knew.’
Lady Margaret stubbed out her cigarette. ‘It’s too cold for me, come and let me help you pour the broth into the tureen.’ They went back into the kitchen and it was half an hour before Evie had time to walk along to the laundry. There was Millie, chattering to her staff, her sleeves rolled up, and steam soaking her hair.
By the morning of Christmas Eve there was an inch of snow, with more threatening. Veronica and Evie worked hard, anything to make the seconds, minutes, hours pass. ‘They’re coming,’ they said, every time they passed one another. Evie’s mam and da were smiling all the while too, as her mam looked after the villagers’ children in the garage and her da helped Stanhope, the blacksmith, in the workshop with the men.
They would be here for lunch.
Evie thought she’d die with the tension. They were coming. There’d been no telegram bearing dreadful news about Mr Auberon, and he would have let them know if the men were hurt rather than let them wait for a letter, so they were coming and she allowed herself to think of something other than the present. They were coming, and soon she’d feel Si’s arms around her, his lips on hers. She’d stroke his hair and hear his voice, and Jack would be here too, lovely lovely Jack.
Millie sang in the laundry and nipped out to the garage to see Tim. ‘Your da’s coming,’ she cooed as she brought him into the kitchen for a biscuit. ‘Go to your Auntie Evie, she’ll sing to you.’ Evie couldn’t because she was up to her eyes preparing lunch, but she said she’d sing later, round the Christmas tree with Tim’s da and everybody else, as the darkness fell.
Lunchtime came and went and they had not come. Now Evie and her da, who was not on his shift at Auld Maud until 2 a.m., walked up and down the drive in the bitter chill. The train was delayed, that was all. It was just delayed. Over tea her mam said the same. ‘They are delayed, that’s all. Just delayed.’
Lady Veronica joined them in the kitchen and prepared vegetables for dinner, with Lady Margaret’s help. Veronica said to Evie, ‘The train will have been delayed, Richard says that we would have heard otherwise.’ Her voice was soft when she talked of her husband, and there was a light in her eyes that had been increasing since his return. Mrs Moore had said that sometimes two people needed to be thrown together to really get to know one another.
Simon’s da, Alec, arrived from his shift at the pit and together he and Evie’s da smoked cigarettes and patrolled the drive, the snow glinting under the hunter’s moon. There’d be some rabbits snared tonight. Evie and Lady Veronica joined them after dinner had gone up. Lieutenant Jameson and Captain Neave loitered on the steps smoking their pipes, and over by the cedar others were swinging their arms to keep the circulation going. Harry was with them. He had a greatcoat on, and his head-warmer knitted by Annie, and was puffing on his pipe in spite of Dr Nicholls thundering, ‘And what’s the point of getting you better if you’re taking that rubbish into your lungs?’ But for men who’d faced far worse it was water off a duck’s back.
‘You would have heard if there was anything amiss,’ Captain Neave told Evie as she stopped next to him, slapping her hands together. Veronica joined them, her shawl wrapped tightly around her. The lights were flooding from the house, and somewhere on the ground floor a few voices were singing ‘Silent Night’.
An owl was hooting. No, more than one. The moon cast long shadows over the lawn and in the hedges creatures rustled. From the house came a silence, then a scream and a groan, nothing out of the ordinary here. The choir began again. The owls hooted, again. A door slammed shut. Millie joined them. A fox barked, and then there it was, the sound of crunching, carried on the light cold breeze.
The officers lifted their heads, their faces tense, their pipes glowing. Over by the cedar tree the men stood motionless, listening. Footsteps, or was it the telegraph boy’s bicycle? Evie and Veronica held hands, so tightly.
No one moved, or breathed, but everyone looked, straining to hear, and see.
They saw pinpricks of light from cigarettes. Then they came, walking abreast in a line. Their three men, Simon, Jack and Auberon, shoulders hunched, feet dragging, greatcoats flapping, caps at an angle, and then another figure. Roger. Veronica and Evie ran towards them, and after a moment, Millie too. They ran and ran and at last they were in their arms, and it didn’t matter that the stench of mud and death clung to their men’s clothes and skin, and filled the women’s lungs, for they were here. It didn’t matter that their faces were drawn, pale and exhausted. They had not really believed that they would ever see them again.
‘We came straight here,’ Simon murmured. ‘We stink but we wanted to come straight here. We have to leave in two days because it took so long to get to you.’
His lips were on Evie’s, and nothing else mattered. She wouldn’t think of anything, not the lice she could feel moving beneath her hands, not the smell of war. She was used to that. What mattered was that he was home, they were all home, and for two days they’d be safe. ‘I love you with all my heart,’ she said against his mouth, and allowed joy to overwhelm her.
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Copyright © Margaret Graham 2014
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as asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This novel is a work of fiction. Apart from references to actual figures and places, all other names and characters are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Arrow Books
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ISBN 9780099586838
Easterleigh Hall Page 37
