by Allie Burns
‘There are lots of causes I can get behind …’ he began to explain but Mother spoke to cut him down.
‘You need to do something with your life. Look at your research into Wilfred, and what it uncovered – that was useful, Cecil. You can’t protest about life for the rest of your life; you have the intelligence to change it by doing something.’
He put his hands on his lap beneath the table, reminding Emily of when they were children and he’d been in trouble with Father for setting the sheep free or refusing to eat his lamb chop. Mother had never admonished him before.
‘Why don’t you enquire to the local newspapers and ask for an apprenticeship? Liverpool is rioting. Why don’t you go and report on it? The miners are out at Tilmanstone – that’s where you should be, not here, moping about the house.’
‘What about the family? I’m the eldest male now …’
‘Why don’t you go and write to the newspapers?’ Mother said gently.
*
The gravel rustled outside, announcing the arrival of a car.
‘I sent for my driver.’ Wilfred appeared in the dining-room doorway. ‘There’s no telling how much longer those militants on the railway will hold out. Don’t make a fuss,’ he said. His eyes lingered on Mother for a moment, willing her to look up and tell him that she’d changed her mind, while Emily silently implored her to hold her ground.
A brief flicker to acknowledge his departure. And then the front door thudded to a close, the car engine roared, and the gravel danced at the car’s departure.
‘I’m going to bed,’ announced Mother.
Later that night Emily knocked on Mother’s door and asked her what was troubling her.
‘I’m on my own now, aren’t I.’ She shrugged. ‘For the first time in my life. I feel as though my toes are level with a cliff edge.’
*
Martha met her at the station with a huge heart-warming hug. Her friend had been right: the train journey to Lingfield was easy. John had been soothed to sleep by the swing and sway of the train travelling along the tracks, giving her a chance to rest as open fields flew past the window.
She and Martha took it in turns to push the carriage all the way along Windmill Lane. At the pond, they stopped so John could watch the ducks, and then finally they arrived at the colony.
A day away from the village should be long enough for word to travel, and for everyone to learn that Wilfred’s plans for the mill were finished. Tomorrow she might be able to walk down the lane without being jeered or cat-called from a neighbouring field or a passing cart.
‘We’ve had teething problems,’ Martha said. ‘Somewhere like HopBine Farm depends on the unpaid labour of a housewife. None of us have a Mrs Tipton working for us for free and that’s proving to be a challenge.’
John was quite a weight now and too heavy to carry so she pushed the baby carriage through the gate and onto the plot, waking him up. She lifted him out so he could inspect his new surroundings with his serious face.
‘There will be thirteen holdings in the end,’ Martha said. ‘Poultry, fruit, market gardens, a horse girl … I’ll be doing fruit.’
‘Of course you’ll be growing fruit. I wouldn’t expect anything else from a Private from the Bramley Battalion.’
‘Corporal, thank you. And I’ll have you know I’m Officer status now.’
Together they pushed John along a nobbled, narrow track that ran alongside Martha’s plot. Number three, sloping down the hill.
‘And your lodgings?’ Emily paused to catch her breath.
‘Not as roomy as Perseverance Place.’ Emily would never have described their old home as roomy. ‘Not as cheap either.’ Nor that. ‘My board and lodging is thirty-five shillings a week.’ Martha raised her eyebrows.
‘Do you think it will work?’ she asked. ‘Will you make enough money to live?’
‘It all depends on the goodwill of the suffragettes. Eleanor’s money is paying for it all and she’s brought in Miss Wilkes, whose expertise has got things up and running. If we don’t earn, we don’t pay back the ladies’ loans. All it takes is a bad harvest or a fall in demand, and it’s back to the pre-war ways of importing. I’m not optimistic, but I’m going to make hay while the sun shines.’
Martha waved a hand at a churned-up plot, overgrown with weeds and thistles. A diseased dwarf apple tree was halfway down. ‘And here’s yours. It’s not much now, but plenty of potential.’
It did have – she could do so much with that land. ‘Think how many men would have died in Ypres for a piece of land this size,’ she said. ‘It’s so precious, isn’t it, such a gift.’
Martha nodded. ‘Have you thought about crops? You must have livestock,’ she said, ‘the way you have with the animals. What about a goat to keep the grass trimmed?’
Emily put John back in his pram, fiddling with the blanket, adjusting it this way and that. Martha came over and then narrowed her eyes. ‘What’s going on, Emily?’
Emily closed her eyes. She was going to have to tell her the truth sooner or later. ‘I can’t take it,’ she said. ‘The plot.’
‘What? Why ever not, Emily? Working your own land, it’s all you ever dreamt of.’
It was, and it would still be, but it would be selfish of her to come here now.
‘Mother has been through a lot,’ she said. ‘I need to know she is settled and can cope with being on her own before I can move here.’ Mother had let her down badly over the farm sale, but she’d never forgive herself if Mother ended up back in the arms of Wilfred simply because Emily had left her when she needed her most. She’d done it once; she couldn’t do it again. ‘It won’t be forever,’ she added. ‘Just not now.’
‘There’s a waiting list, you know. A dozen women will take this plot if you’re not on here when the new season starts.’
She nodded. She understood, but that plot of land simply didn’t have her name on it.
They walked to the boundary of Martha’s rectangle, before they took up their spades and dug over the pasture. She’d wedged two large stones under the Empire’s front wheels. John was kicking his legs about, blowing wet raspberries – his latest trick.
‘We’re off to London, next week.’ Emily forced her spade into the ground with her foot and cleaved the turf apart. ‘To view a small apartment that’s come up in Grandmother’s mansion block. It will suit Mother.’
They worked on together, side by side, until John grew irritable and she took him for a stroll towards the sheep.
Later on, after a ploughman’s lunch at the Wheatsheaf, they walked back to the station and they got to reminiscing about the old days with the land girls.
‘I nearly forgot to say. Hen is to be wed,’ Martha said.
‘Hen? She wanted to go to agricultural college, but then she did miss her tennis parties.’
They hugged up close to the hedgerow as the bus chugged down the lane. ‘It’s easy to slip back into the old way of things,’ Martha said.
‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t,’ Emily said.
Once they were at the station, the guard helped John and the pram onto the carriage.
‘Come and see us again soon,’ Martha called as the train pulled away. ‘My plot is yours too.’
Before long, John dozed off again. The afternoon began to draw in and instead of the fields, her own reflection grew stronger in the window.
A gentleman in a morning suit and top hat read The Times in the seat opposite her. Discreetly she snatched glances of herself. Her hair had worked free of its coil. She had tufts reminiscent of Mrs Tipton’s. She inspected her blouse; it was covered in soil. Mud had lodged itself under her fingernails. Her skin had that same radiant glow that she would have at the end of the day as a land girl.
It wouldn’t be long, and she’d be by Martha’s side.
*
Emily had lost the thread of the conversation. She was too busy keeping an eye on John, as he was passed around Grandmother’s sitting room like a prize marrow at t
he Chartleigh vegetable competition.
The Welfare for the Poor Committee meeting had come to the end of its business and Mother was at the heart of the discussion, boasting about how soundly John slept and Emily’s war effort. The sale to Wilfred had been called off. HopBine was back on the market.
Grandmother wore the largest hat in the room, piled high with glossy fruits. Under the hooped rim, she had the largest hair roll too. Her skirts were the fullest. Her boot heels the sharpest. The tips the pointiest. Her voice the loudest, most forceful. But since she’d discovered that she lived on the spoils of a war profiteer, she planned to move somewhere smaller, more modest, less desirable.
Nothing had changed in the months since they’d first come to London. They were coming towards the end of the year, and the end of the decade and yet everyone was stuck in the past. The women still complained about the lack of servants and still hadn’t caught on to the idea that they would have to start to do things for themselves. They’d soon learn how easy it could be to dress oneself, or put the kettle on the range but how tiring it was to black that range or shine the brass, and what caged birds their servants had been for all these years.
‘Such a terrible shame, isn’t it?’ said one of the ladies quietly to her neighbour while passing the baby on. Both ladies glanced at Emily. She fiddled with her wedding band. She was wearing it today as an outward show of respectability as the widow they all thought her to be. To her it was nothing more than a gleaming reminder of her mistakes.
It was unlikely anyone believed she’d really been widowed, but she’d rather not talk about what had happened. If it ever got out Mabel might lose Theo too, if he was sent to prison.
John complained at being held up to the light by yet another lady with raven-like feathers on her hat. Grandmother asked her companion to take him outside for a breath of fresh air.
‘We’ve heard what your mother thought of the apartment, but what about you, Emily dear?’ Grandmother said.
‘Yes. It was … comfortable,’ Emily answered.
‘Well appointed,’ Grandmother countered. ‘Near to your mother’s friends. Cecil can conduct his journalism from here, and it’s also very convenient for the parks for young John. And available straight away.’
‘Yes.’ It was true. The apartment offered all of those things. Mother was happier here in London, around a variety of friends. It suited her. She’d done her best to meld with the doctors, solicitors and clergy in rural life, but it was amongst these people in the salons where Mother really belonged. It wouldn’t take long before she’d be enjoying her London social life, and Emily would be left at home all day with John.
But while the battered Empire’s wheels ran more smoothly on the neat paths of the park, it was a poor substitute for the countryside. It wasn’t the life she wanted for John, or herself. Mrs Tipton had all but packed up. Percy Greenacre was to take over the farm until a buyer was found and a new manager appointed.
‘We might view a few more places while we’re here,’ Emily said. A garden mews was out of their reach but to be near a park would be something.
‘The windows let in so much light, and there’s a view of Hyde Park all along one side.’ Mother broke away from her conversation to chip in. ‘But if you want to keep searching …’
‘We’ll have to wait, until we have a firm buyer, before we make a final decision,’ Emily said, which reminded her – she checked her watch. Her escort for the evening was due any time now.
*
Emily left Grandmother’s flat wrapped in a silk shawl, eyes trained on the fourth-floor window, as the cab pulled away.
‘I’m sure the baby is in good hands,’ Captain Ellery said. She’d been lucky to catch him in town. His work with the committee for East End soldiers occupied most of his time. ‘Now, first things first, no more of this Captain Ellery nonsense. We’re friends – please call me Thomas.’
He was leaning in towards her, but she kept her eyes forward towards the front seat.
‘Do you remember the silence in the teahouse when you called me Thomas?’
Their laughter filled the car, but the memory of the way he’d behaved towards her when they’d last met still stung her.
‘Very well, Thomas. But you still haven’t told me what we’re going to see,’ she said. Was he still in love? Grandmother hadn’t said any more about it.
‘Monsieur Beaucaire at the Palace Theatre. I think you’ll like it.’
His voice was stronger, more certain now, and he was right: she should enjoy herself. When had she last done that?
‘Grandmother mentioned you were still on the hunt for a property,’ she said.
They sat in the stalls, five rows back, right in the centre. She crossed her legs so that they couldn’t touch Ellery’s.
In the front row was a young man, not very high in his seat. Her view of him was obscured, but his smoothed-down sandy-coloured hair and his handsome nose, made him the spit of Theo. Just as the play was about to begin a tall gentleman sat right in front of Emily, and kept his hat on, which blocked her view of the centre of the stage. As it happened this was where most of the action took place, and also concealed the front row and the man sitting there.
At the interval Thomas had noticed she’d been craning and offered to swap seats. She took up her new spot, one seat along. The man from the front row had left his seat in the interval. She scanned the queue behind the usherette, but he wasn’t there.
The theatre was a bit too bright and garish: the golden cherubs, the red velvet curtains. It struck her as rather like being inside the devil’s belly.
‘What do you think about the play?’ Thomas asked on his return from the usherette.
‘I’m enjoying it.’ She’d read Tarkington’s novel when she worked on the farm. The barber that Lady Mary was in love with would turn out to really be the King of France. ‘Thomas?’ She trained her eyes on the stage. If she didn’t come right out with it the whole evening would pass and she wouldn’t have asked what she’d come here to say. ‘Would you consider coming to Kent to view our estate? The house would be perfect for your ex-soldiers. There are eight bedrooms and the cottages down on Perseverance Place would house the same again.’
‘No,’ Thomas said, ruffling his moustache. ‘It’s not the area I’ve been concentrating my search. I’ve seen a property that would suit the men in Hertfordshire.’
‘So, there’s nothing wrong with the property itself. HopBine,’ she said waiting for his response.
As she suspected he flinched at the name.
‘Are you afraid to face it?’ she said.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said. ‘From what you’ve told me, there’s more land there than we need, or could afford to run.’
‘That’s not the case, Thomas – you’ve been there. It made a ten-bed convalescent home during the war – you were there. Why won’t you talk about it?’
His expression hardened. ‘What are you insinuating? You’re too late that’s all. As I say we’ve got surveyors going out to Hertfordshire. It wouldn’t be right to muddy the waters with another property, no matter how suitable you think it might be.’
‘Or how desperate we are for it to fall into the right hands.’
Thomas closed his eyes. Breathed deeply.
‘You’ve nothing to be afraid of,’ she said, holding his arm. ‘You’re so much more alive than the broken man I first met. You won’t become him if you go back.’
‘The funds we have to rehabilitate the men would be drained by maintenance costs on a place like that.’
She folded her arms. Her father had dreamt of HopBine being a home that would provide for his family and the community; it would be simply the perfect place for those men.
‘Emily, you’ve put up a worthy fight for your family home,’ Thomas said. ‘But you will find an interested party, someone prepared to make it sound.’
‘Or raze it to the ground.’
‘Perhaps. But it just doesn’t sound
practical for our needs. I am sorry.’
The man from the front row was back. He had his head turned away from her while he spoke with a woman. The embers ignited. Could it really be Theo? She sat forwards in her chair. Waiting, waiting. His head faced forwards now, as he contemplated the path back to his seat. He did have brown eyes. A kind face, a handsome nose. But it wasn’t Theo. A bucket of water drenched her. She must be losing her mind if her best hope was to be reunited with her bigamist husband.
‘The barber character makes a good comic.’ Thomas returned to the operetta.
‘He’s a bit silly if you ask me,’ she snapped. ‘The whole play was a bad choice.’ He was being stubborn beyond measure, and he wouldn’t even try to help when she needed him most. She folded her arms tight.
Thomas shifted about in his seat. He was pretending his ice cream was fascinating. Licking it into a round. Admiring it as it glistened against the backdrop of the velvet curtains. What was there left to say? If she asked him again to come to Kent, the answer would still be no.
She didn’t want to be in London. Stuck in these stalls watching this frivolous play. Life as she knew it and wanted it was coming to a close and here she was hiding, drinking tea, viewing apartments, finding that her friend wasn’t such a good one after all, and accepting that John would never meet his father.
The bell rang, two insistent drills: ten minutes until the show began again.
‘I’m very sorry, Thomas,’ she said. ‘I feel I ought to check on John. I haven’t left him this long before.’ They pushed their knees to one side to let a train of people squeeze past and go back to their seats. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to worry during the second half.’
He was on his feet and had her back at Grandmother’s apartment without another word passing between them.
Chapter Thirty-Six
October 1919
The agent had shown some prospective buyers around the house, but they had relayed that the need for repairs was too great. The house would need to be pulled down. Emily persuaded Mother not to write and tell Uncle Wilfred, thankful she was there to intercept her. They would just have to hold an auction, which was a risk but one that guaranteed them a sale and an end to the waiting.
