by Allie Burns
She edged the pram towards the ditch at the rattling approach of a car. The vehicle slowed as it passed her, and the driver wound down the window.
‘Hello there!’ the driver said, the green of his eyes shining in the sunlight. ‘I found you.’
‘Thomas!’
He had a map open on the passenger seat.
Her delight faded. She’d been so irritable and rude towards him at the theatre. She didn’t deserve his forgiveness or his friendship. When he’d dropped her off at Grandmother’s flat she hadn’t even thanked him for taking her out, or apologised for cutting the evening short.
‘You we were right,’ he called through the window. ‘I ought to at least consider your property. Especially if you think it might have potential.’
Her heart started to thump in her chest, not just at the possibility of what this might mean for HopBine’s future, but what it meant for Thomas. He was back, facing down his demons and that had to be a good thing.
‘The agent is already up at the house with an elderly couple who will no doubt complain that the roof needs fixing.’
‘I’d like it if you could you show me around,’ he said. ‘I saw that the big house – Finch Hall – is sold?’
‘To my uncle, but he can’t put his plans into action without our farmland that offers access to the river.’
‘And what of the family there?’
‘Lady Radford is staying with friends; Lady Clara is to be married to her French sweetheart. They met in the war, while she was running a hospital near to Paris. They’ve been separated all this time, and then a chance meeting reunited them.’
‘How romantic,’ he said. And then his footsteps slowed. He took her hands. His were soft and warm, his green eyes twinkling in the sunshine. She pulled her hands away.
‘You really do make the most delicious Turkish delight. Did I mention that before?’
‘So you did remember me?’
He grinned. ‘I was difficult with you. I’m sorry. I just wanted to forget everything about my time here. I wanted to hide from what a terrible wreck I was, and I thought if you remembered me as that man, slumped and listless and afraid of the door slamming shut, then you wouldn’t look at me in the same way.’
‘Of course I knew it was you, I understand.’
‘But you got me thinking, after I dropped you back at your grandmother’s. It was here that I began to recover. I left here with hope in my heart; partly put there by you and in part by whatever healing magic is in the air here.’
She was close enough to kiss him. She’d helped to make him better and well enough so that he could fall in love with another girl.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said.
‘Grandmother mentioned you’d fallen in love.’
‘Ah. Yes. I told my mother about this girl I’d met in London, but she was already married, expecting a baby, and living with an unpleasant uncle. She had enough on her mind.’
If she closed her eyes, and let her face drift closer … no. Not yet. It could wait. She held his hand now, stroked the skin with her thumb.
‘I can’t stop myself from smiling,’ she said.
‘Me neither,’ he replied. ‘Let’s not.’
Hand in hand they walked on.
‘So were you treated at the Finch Hall hospital?’ She eventually found some words and settled in to find out what he’d held back from her all this time.
‘That’s right. A shrapnel injury to my thigh, but I had shell shock too, though my CO wouldn’t have it – they wanted me back at the Front. I wasn’t here long enough. My favourite spot was there.’ He pointed to the monkey puzzle tree. ‘The nurse would wheel me out for a quick shot of winter daylight.’
‘Oh dear,’ she said, putting a hand to her mouth. ‘I’ve just remembered. I sang, didn’t I? “Silent Night”.’
‘I was going to be a gentleman and not bring that up. But I will say I still think your Turkish delight is very good.’
She rolled her eyes at him.
‘The funny thing is, in my mind, this place was exactly what I wanted for the soldiers we’re going to help through the charity. It was so restorative here, a much-needed pause. I’m not sure I would have made it through that last stretch without being here, and my all-too-brief encounter with an out-of-tune young woman, with straw in her hair, mud on her face and a blissful contentment I’d never seen before, or since.’
He pulled her closer, rested his hands on her waist. ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘for storming out of the theatre.’
‘That’s all right,’ she joked.
‘Emily, before you get your hopes up, I should tell you that we’re still short of investment. We can’t commit to buy anywhere until we have more funds in place.’
‘It’s still worth you viewing it though.’
‘Of course; if we need more capital then we’ll simply have to get it.’
They strolled up the driveway together.
‘So. I’m trying frantically to recall everything you told me about the house and apply it here. Your father designed the place?’ he prompted.
‘He pulled the last house to the ground and had this built,’ she began. She parked John by the front door and then took Thomas around the other side to the lawn, the rose garden and once there she scrambled up on to the boundary wall. ‘He changed the entrance so we had more privacy and closed the lane down there so that New Lane was built and then he added the cedars. He wanted us to feel as though he’d sewn us our own little pocket.’
‘It is a safe haven from all of that.’ He gestured towards the horizon.
‘Father’s biggest project was the farm. He had no idea on the day-to-day running of it and left that to the Tiptons. But he redeveloped it – new buildings, new orchards, everything a gentleman farmer could aspire to own – and had ideas about retiring it and running it, but knowing what I know now, he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.’
She wanted to take him down to the farmhouse to meet Mrs Tipton, Lily and Sally and the Fordson lurking in the cart shed. She jumped down from the wall and approached the rose garden.
When she glanced up, Thomas smiled at her.
‘It seems like a lifetime ago that I made Turkish delight,’ she said.
‘Well I’m glad you shook me out of myself and brought me back here. You …’
‘What is it?’
‘A raincloud followed you around when you were last in London.’
‘It did,’ she replied.
‘Then you shouldn’t be there,’ he said.
‘I can’t leave Mother, yet. I will, eventually, but only when I’m sure she’s ready.’
She put her hands in her pockets, began to walk back to the front of the house. John would be stirring soon, but she stopped at the corner.
‘Do you remember that I told you about Martha and her women’s colony over at Lingfield? I can’t get out of my head how something similar could work here at HopBine to give the soldiers a trade. You could turn the lawn and the paddock into plots for the men to work. Eleanor and Miss Wilkes could advise us. Your ex-officer committee could roll up their sleeves and make the repairs to the house.’
Thomas was nodding, surveying the land around him.
‘You could employ some ex-land girls,’ she continued, ‘to work alongside the men, learn a trade from the women in the fresh air they need so much.’ She was talking too quickly, and he was smiling at her, shielding his eyes from the sun. ‘The profits could be shared between the soldiers themselves for their families, and the rest could go towards running the place.’
She stopped to catch her breath. What would he say? Another outright no? But he was here, wasn’t he?
‘And the farm?’ he asked.
‘The farm needs a new manager and the ex-soldiers and land girls could work for him.’
A collared dove waddled along the bridge of the wall. Its mate flew overhead.
He didn’t say anything, but she’d expected that. Thomas was cautious, the sort
to weigh things up before jumping in, but she had got him thinking, and that was enough for now. Back at the front of the house, Mother had already lifted John out of the carriage and hugged him close to her chest.
‘What do you think of the place?’ Mother asked.
‘I stayed here for a short while, during the war,’ Thomas told her. ‘When I emerged from those trees I had the overwhelming sense that I was coming home.’
*
Dear Uncle Wilfred
You can never make amends for your decision to prioritise profits during the war, but I have a suggestion that might help you to at least redress the balance. As you know, Grandmother began a committee to help soldiers in the East End whose lives are at risk because of injuries sustained during the war. The ex-officers she rounded up would like to buy the HopBine Estate and the men will now call this place their home.
More investment is needed to turn the land over so that the men can not just live, but work at HopBine too. There would be no return on your investment, other than perhaps to show your mother and mine that there is some good in you after all.
Your niece
Emily
Chapter Thirty-Seven
November 1919
There was still so much to do in their last remaining days at HopBine. They returned from a shopping trip to London for curtains and new furniture for the Belgravia flat, to be welcomed by an empty echo in the hallway. Few of their belongings were there any longer to absorb their footsteps and voices, many of the rooms were shut up, and much of the furniture had been taken to auction while they’d been in London.
At the end of the week they would move to London permanently so that the team of ex-officers could begin their repairs.
They cleared out cupboard after cupboard, unearthing treasures long forgotten. But no matter what they put into boxes, they couldn’t take it all with them. The stories, the family folktales were everywhere, and nowhere. Their walls didn’t so much talk, they breathed; inhaling the memories, exhaling them in fragments of golden dust. What would happen without the four walls of HopBine to keep them safe? Would they simply drift away?
They left her brother John’s room until last. They emptied it together; the three of them. His jumpers were folded for the Salvation Army, just as Mother had done for Father. They reduced John’s life down to a small box. Photographs, dog-eared and browned Boy’s Own magazines, a mouth organ, his spotter’s guides to birds and trees. His diary from the war.
‘Why are you keeping those?’ she asked Mother, pointing at a frayed box of toy soldiers.
‘I thought your John might like to play with them, when he’s older.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Let’s not.’ She would bury them in the garden, and she had just the spot.
*
Visitors called to say their goodbyes. Told them they would be missed, thanked them for not selling to the highest bidder, saving the village from Uncle Wilfred’s vision, and opening the estate and the village up to ex-war heroes.
Norah Peters called by with news.
‘So, have you heard about the Radfords then?’ Norah said. The news that Finch Hall had been mortgaged in the depression before the war was commonplace now. Tax, interest rates and death duties had crippled the Radfords too. Uncle Wilfred had quickly sold it on to an educational consortium who were to convert it to a private school. ‘About Lady Clara?’
Emily shook her head.
‘It’s terribly sad. Clara Radford’s French sweetheart suffered from some complications to his war injury, and he died. Lady Clara has cried for a week. She’s home with Mother, except she’s not home of course. The poor things no longer have one. They’re living at a hotel, and then Clara is to take up the duty of her mother’s travelling companion on a trip to Pompeii. Such a shame when you consider all that family did for the war.’
Norah shook her head. Emily shuddered for poor Clara. The war had given her so much opportunity, and now she would be carrying her mother’s bags around the streets of Italy.
By the end of the week, Emily’s throat and eyes were sore with dust. Her knees ached from kneeling and just when she wanted to sleep for a week, they were finished.
Mother’s skirt bounced as she strode around. Her laughter filled the house; her skin had the sheen of a younger woman. Emily often came across her humming to herself.
Thomas had taken on board her suggestion; he’d enlisted the help of Cecil’s suffragettes and he was going to turn the farm into a colony. All the key people had come together at HopBine. The dining room buzzed with the chatter and ideas. Thomas had wanted her there, but she’d found a buyer for the Fordson and needed to help Mrs Tipton to sell it.
*
The tractor’s interested party was from a neighbouring farm, the other side of West Malling. He wanted a demonstration. While John slept in his pram, Emily cranked up the engine and then climbed astride it, the motor chugging away. While Mrs Tipton gave the farmer the patter about the drastic improvements it would make to productivity she steered it around the farmyard.
‘It’s a dream to drive,’ she yelled over the engine. She was so busy, craning the wrong way that she had to swerve as a horse trotted into the yard. It was the velvet-brown coat of Hawk. Such an elegant stallion, his head always high, he headed straight for the barn.
‘Mother!’
Mother sat astride Hawk. She clicked her heels and brought the horse to a stop outside the stables and waved to Emily as the tractor took another lap, and then another. The buyer was convinced, a roll of notes pulled from his rear pocket, which would set Mrs Tipton up nicely for her retirement. Emily killed the engine.
Mother applauded her. ‘Masterful,’ she said. ‘Quite masterful!’
‘He remembered me,’ Mother said, stroking Hawk’s mane as she clipped over. How could Mother have thought it would be any other way? ‘And now I’m in love with him all over again. I’m going to ask Thomas if they could afford to keep him on so the soldiers can ride him and perhaps we can visit from time to time. I neglected you, didn’t I, boy.’
*
Emily parked the Empire outside the farmhouse. Male laughter escaped the kitchen window. It was probably Percy Greenacre. He was the most likely to be appointed the new manager, and was probably visiting to fit his furniture for size.
She’d come back later. She was just wheeling the pram away when Mrs Tipton called from the window: ‘Coo-ee. Where are you off to without saying hello? I’ve someone here to meet you. Says he was a seasonal worker on the farm one summer, but I’m damned if I can place him.’
Inside, Mrs Tipton was on the sofa warming her toes in front of the crackling fire. Emily peeled off her coat, hung it behind the door and was about to greet the chap with a cheery beam, when she stopped short. It wasn’t an old labourer at all. She yelped and leapt backwards, standing on Sally’s tail and making her shriek too.
‘You remember him then?’ Mrs Tipton asked.
‘I would say.’ She held on to the table for stability. ‘He’s my husband.’
‘Theo?’ The colour drained from Mrs Tipton’s face. ‘You, you rotten little weasel. I’d have never made you a tea if I’d known.’
‘I came to speak to Emily – I owe her an explanation,’ Theo said.
‘It’s a bit late for that, Theo. Your wife already wrote to me and told me what sort of a man you are. How could you? It was all lies from the very beginning.’
‘You deserve better.’ He hung his head. Yes. She did. ‘I wasn’t a well man for a long while. It’s no excuse, for what I did,’ he continued. ‘I woke up every day thinking it could be my last, or the end for some poor sod over the other side of the battlefield, who I had to kill. Or not knowin’ if I was going to witness another friend blown to bits. It wasn’t easy finding a way to live with all that. And then a bright girl like you wrote to me, filled with all the romance of your life in the country, and I got caught up in it all. Ended up living two lives at once, but neither could save me from the trenches.�
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‘I ought to call the police,’ Emily said, gripping the table now. ‘You could go to prison.’
‘Shall I leave you two to talk?’ asked Mrs Tipton. Emily nodded. ‘I’ll just be next door in the parlour.’
‘It’s been more than a year, Theo,’ Emily said once the door was shut. ‘Cecil still has a scar.’
‘If he’s here, I’d like to say sorry to him.’
She froze for a moment. Was it really Theo? His handsome nose and melting eyes. His eyebrows edging forwards, the etched line between them deepening. He was shabbier now he wasn’t in his uniform. His jacket frayed around the lapels.
She snapped to attention. ‘I need to get on,’ she said. ‘We’re leaving for London tomorrow.’
‘I don’t blame you if you can’t forgive me. But I’d like to hold my son.’
‘Perhaps he’s better off without you,’ she said.
‘I understand if you can’t forgive me. But I can’t leave without seeing the baby. Now, Emily, you wouldn’t keep a man from his son, would you?’
It was tempting, but she couldn’t do it. Although he’d been the one who’d kept himself from John. He’d been the one who’d deserted her, not the other way around.
‘I can send you a photograph.’
‘I’d like that, but it’s not the same, is it? Come on, Emily. I’ve come all this way. Where is he?’
She must have jerked her head, or twitched her eyes, because Theo had sidestepped her and pushed the kitchen door open.
‘Just let me hold him,’ he whispered, ‘and then, I promise you if it’s what you want, I’ll be gone. I won’t bother you if you don’t want bothering. I owe you that.’
‘Wait,’ she called, but he shrugged her hand from his arm.
The chickens rushed over to them as they approached the Empire in the yard. His arm brushed hers as they leant in. Their hands connected as she slid the baby into his arms.
‘Be careful with him.’
