The Watercress Girls

by Sheila Newberry

  Gracie, in gingham rompers and a tiny baseball cap, crawled on a rug on a stretch of grass under a shady tree. Mattie, in shorts and T-shirt, and Sybil, in a dirndl skirt and sleeveless blouse, sat on canvas seats, taking it in turns to jump out and propel Gracie back on to the rug whenever she tried to venture further. She thought it was a good game. Lloyd sat engrossed in a book. Ruth joined them with a tray of lemonade and home-made shortbread.

  ‘I’ve never been so lazy before in my whole life,’ Mattie confessed, ‘I like it!’

  ‘Your Megan’s a marvel,’ Ruth commented, watching the truck in the distance.

  ‘Yes she is,’ Mattie agreed. Megan was enjoying being young and unattached again, she thought. She was sure now that they were doing the right thing, leaving her free to go to college with other girls of her age.

  It was a golden holiday, golden grain, glorious sunshine and best of all, peace.

  Twenty-seven

  Gracie was eight years old and still living with her grandparents in spring, 1953. Sometimes Mattie looked at her, wondering where all the years had gone to. Not that she or Griff could imagine parting with her now. When Megan qualified as a primary school teacher she had been offered a post near the border of North Dakota and Manitoba, in Canada. It was a small school, taking pupils up to seventh grade, and she said it reminded her of the one she had attended herself before the move to the city.

  They’d agreed then that it would be easier for Megan to carry out her duties if Gracie were to join her mother when she was of school age herself, but so far this hadn’t happened, because Gracie needed frequent visits to the ophthalmic clinic as her squint became more of a problem. It was Mattie who patiently applied eye drops, supervised special exercises to try to strengthen and straighten the weak eye, and persuaded Gracie to wear spectacles with one blacked-out lens. Eventually, an operation was deemed necessary. It was an anxious time, reassuring a fractious child, but fortunately it was a success. Mattie convinced herself that Megan would not have had the time to deal with all this.

  They missed Sybil and Lloyd too, but they were happily settled in the Californian sunshine. Before they left, Sybil received a civic award, a medallion, for her services to humanity in wartime. Many who were helped to conceal their battle scars had regained confidence ‘to face the world’, as the citation put it. Her family were very proud of her.

  Next door there now lived a widow who took in lodgers and was too busy to make small talk. Their other neighbours, Kay’s family, were out at work all day. Mattie looked forward mostly to Gracie’s return from school, and later, Griff’s from work. Visiting family back home in England was further delayed while they brought up another child.

  Megan had been with them every other Christmas, weather permitting, and during the school summer holidays she came for a couple of weeks. Last year Griff, Mattie and an excited Gracie had made the lengthy journey by car to stay with Megan. It was not so daunting a ride as it had been all those years ago: their vehicle was comfortable and reliable, there were now places to put up over night, and gas stations which not only had rest rooms and snacks, but could assist, if your transport broke down en route.

  They kept a long-standing promise to go on to Moose Jaw to see Grace and Mungo, who was now retired. ‘Grandma Grace’, Gracie called her other grandmother, but she kept to ‘Mommy Mattie’, which she’d decided on when she was two years old. She called Megan by her Christian name, and Mattie suspected that Megan thought of Gracie more as a younger sister rather than as her daughter. Grace confided to Mattie that she was disappointed that Gracie had her mother’s surname, Parry, rather than Tommy’s, but Mattie explained that as he hadn’t known of her impending birth, Megan didn’t feel she should use his name. Mattie added, ‘Gracie, will, I promise be told about her father when she is old enough to understand.’

  When Lydia, newly married and living near her parents, came to see her niece Mattie realized that it was Tommy’s sister whom Gracie most resembled. Lydia was a tall, thin girl with straight, long brown hair kept off her face with an Alice band, and large, soulful dark eyes behind her glasses. Gracie had recently been prescribed new glasses to correct short sight. She seemed to have more in common with her aunt than her mother. They whispered and giggled together and Lydia spoiled her when they went shopping.

  This rapport did not go unnoticed by Megan. I’m jealous, she realized, like Mom was when I was a child, and enthused about being taken out for treats by Sybil. Gracie thinks of Mom and Dad as her parents: they appear to think I’m not responsible enough to care for my own child, when I have thirty children in my class at school! She made up her mind to broach the subject when she was next home at Easter, in early April.

  Mattie, too, was keeping something to herself regarding Lydia, not even confiding in Griff. Lydia had seized the chance to have a private word with her, when they volunteered to do the washing up together after lunch.

  She said: ‘If ever you find it too much, looking after Gracie, I would be glad to take her on. My husband has been married before and has a grown-up family – he doesn’t want to deal with the baby stage again. Gracie is just the right age—’

  ‘No,’ Mattie exclaimed vehemently, if she leaves us, it will be to join her mother.’

  Megan shared the schoolhouse with the senior teacher; they divided the chores, but Megan took on the small, neglected garden. Her social life, she thought ruefully, was practically non-existent in this rural outpost. She wrote to her mother for advice, and was told to clean the soil by planting a potato patch!

  One Saturday morning she was digging and turning over clods of earth, wearing her now ancient dungarees with one of the straps pinned to the front because sewing was not her forte, when she was hailed by a familiar voice from beyond the garden gate. She straightened up, then let out an unladylike squeal: ‘Max! Where have you been all these years? Come in. I’ll wash my hands and put the kettle on.’

  ‘Let me hug you first,’ he said, as he came up to her. He didn’t kiss her but ruffled her curls, as he had as a youth when he wanted to rile her. ‘We’ve got a lot to catch up on.’ He followed her indoors.

  Megan was glad her colleague was away for the weekend, as this meant she could entertain him. The acerbic Miss Rodda didn’t approve of what she called, ‘followers’. She’d been at the school since 1935, and had seen younger teachers come and go.

  ‘Sit down,’ she invited, in the tiny kitchen. She removed a pile of laundry waiting to be ironed from one hard bentwood chair. ‘Now, you start first.’

  ‘Did you know I went to med. school, after demob?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I qualified last year. I’m working as a temporary locum not far from here. I am taking up a great opportunity at the end of May, a post at one of the big London teaching hospitals. Grandfather helped to fix it up for me; he still has his contacts in England.

  ‘Sybil sent me your address, and when I discovered how close we were I decided I must look you up before I go. I thought it was time for a reunion.

  ‘I gather you haven’t married. Nor have I. We’ve both been too busy, I guess.’

  ‘I have an eight-year-old daughter, as I believe you know,’ Megan said evenly.

  ‘She’s being brought up by your parents, I gather?’

  Megan’s eyes filled with tears. Her voice wobbled. ‘Yes – they’ve been wonderful – but now – well, I want her back. I can cope with being a mother, now.’

  She was sitting beside him at the kitchen table, and he put a comforting arm round her shoulders. He said quietly: ‘Then you must tell them that, Megan.’

  ‘Gracie, my little girl, she might not want to live with me.’

  ‘You’re her mother. It might take time, but you should try, I believe.’

  ‘I must tell them face to face. I’ll be home for Easter, next month.’

  ‘I was thinking of paying them a visit myself – maybe you could do with some moral support.’

  ‘I sure could,’ she
agreed. ‘Oh Max, I really hoped to see you again.…’

  ‘This time I intend to keep in touch.’

  He still has his blond good looks, she thought, looking into his blue eyes, but, he’s a man now, not an infatuated boy, and me – I’m a woman who loved and lost someone a long time ago.

  ‘I’ve still got your fraternity pin,’ she whispered.

  Max had the weekend off, too. ‘Let me take you into town later for dinner,’ he suggested.

  She blushed. He’d obviously seen there wasn’t much in the fridge when she’d foraged for something to make him a sandwich at lunchtime. ‘The local diner will do,’ she told him. ‘They do a nice hot chilli con carne. I always cool my mouth with a whopping big ice cream after a plate of that!’

  They didn’t stop talking all day. Megan reminded him how they had spent much of their childhood making faces at one another. ‘You were always so neat and tidy, with your hair slicked back, while I was always’ – she indicated the large safety pin on her front ruefully – ‘a mess, despite Mom’s best efforts. You spent all your holidays with your grandfather, I guess he was old-fashioned. We never heard anything about your parents.’

  ‘That’s because my father, my grandparents’ only son, left my mother when I was very young. They felt responsible for me, paid for my education. I was sent away to school when my mother remarried. She had another family, and my stepfather didn’t care to have me around.… Like your Gracie, I was very close to my grandparents. My grandmother died while I was still at school, and later grandfather married Sybil and so I sort of felt connected to your family, in a way. Not that you appreciated that, eh?’

  ‘We did become friends later,’ she said. ‘D’you remember the rodeo which we went to, just before the war, when we were both still at school?’

  He grinned. ‘I saw you in a new light then – when you volunteered to spin a rope!’

  ‘I made a bit of a fool of myself.’

  ‘You were always ready to have a go. I envied that. Your family encouraged you. My grandfather was too protective. That’s why I joined the army straight from school.’

  Very late that same evening, back at the schoolhouse, he said regretfully, ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Will you come back tomorrow?’

  ‘You want me to come?’ They were standing by the front door, and she nodded.

  ‘I might even put on a dress!’

  ‘This is how I always remembered you, in your dungarees!’ He inclined his head towards her. ‘Do I get a goodnight kiss?’

  ‘Why not?’ she said, as he drew her to him. ‘Watch out for the safety pin,’ she murmured.

  They met as often as possible during the ensuing weeks. Just before Easter, before the trip home, he told her, as they went for an evening stroll in a nearby wood, ‘Well, that’s it. I took the locum’s job for three months, and I’ve finished there now. There’s something I want to ask you. Will you come with me to London? I—’

  ‘Are you suggesting I marry you?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting – I’m asking! As usual you didn’t give me time to finish what I was saying! I don’t suppose the school will be happy at the lack of notice, but I’ll take the blame for that. And before you start finding reasons to say you can’t – of course I want Gracie to come with us.’

  ‘You haven’t even met her yet! Max, there’s something I should tell you – you may change your mind when you hear it. I was very ill when Gracie was born. I was advised not to have more children. That wouldn’t be fair to you, not to have a child of your own!’

  ‘I hope, in time, I could be a father figure to your daughter, Megan. My grandfather fulfilled that role very well, for me. Please say you’ll think about my proposal, but I need an answer before we leave for Minot.’

  ‘I’ll give you my answer now, if you tell me what I most need to know.’

  ‘I love you, Megan.’

  ‘That’s all right then and I love you, too! Yes!’ she almost shouted.

  ‘You’ll frighten all the birds out of the trees!’ he said.

  ‘It’s hard to take all this in,’ Mattie said, when they broke the news to her and Griff after Gracie was in bed. Megan had written to ask if it was all right for her to bring a friend home with her for Easter, and they had assumed it was a girlfriend.

  ‘D’you remember Max?’ Megan said, when they arrived.

  ‘Of course I do. Why didn’t you say who it was?’ Mattie asked. She thought: Megan will have to share with Gracie now, and Max can have Megan’s room.

  ‘Isn’t this rushing things?’ Griff put in mildly, now.

  ‘I know, you’re thinking of what happened in London, aren’t you? It’s not like that at all. Yes, we intend to be married as soon as we can arrange it, because Max had already planned to go to England – London again, I admit – and now we’ve got together again we are not going to be parted!’ Megan insisted.

  Max said quickly: ‘Calm down, Megan! Look, all we need to say is that we are both sure of our feelings.’

  ‘I’ve given my notice in at school,’ Megan said defiantly. ‘I’m not going back.’

  ‘How long have we got, to make ready for the wedding, and when are you leaving?’ With Mattie speechless for once, Griff had to smooth things over.

  ‘Oh, Dad – I knew you’d come up trumps! We’ll get a special licence. We’re expected in London, in late May. Just in time for the coronation, Mom. Won’t Gracie love that!’

  ‘Gracie.…’ Mattie said faintly.

  ‘Yes, Mom. I’ll tell her our news tomorrow. She’ll be coming with us, of course!’

  Later, when Mattie and Megan went upstairs to bed, the men stayed downstairs for a nightcap and a chat.

  Mattie paused outside Gracie’s door. ‘Are you sleeping in here? Or—’

  ‘Oh, Mom darling – I’m not making the same mistake as last time. Max respects that. We haven’t slept together yet. I love him, Mom, oh, I do – please be happy for me!’ She hugged her mother close. ‘I know how much you and Dad will miss Gracie, but I have to try to make up to her now, for not being a proper mom, myself….’

  Twenty-eight

  It wasn’t the wedding Mattie had dreamed of when Megan was a teenager: a long white dress and veil, a church packed with well-wishers and rose petals drifting down as the cameras clicked.

  ‘What did you wear on your wedding day?’ Megan asked her mother.

  ‘It was thirty years ago, you know! A pale-pink linen two-piece, and artificial rosebuds in my hair.… You could wear something more striking, with your black hair. How about sunshine yellow? I wore a yellow dress once,’ she reminisced.

  ‘I remember you telling me, it was when you had your portrait painted, wasn’t it? I’m thinking of buying a full-skirted frock, with petticoats, nipped in at the waist and the new mid-calf length, I think, with flat ballet pumps to match … don’t look so amazed! I like the idea of decorating my hair instead of a veil!’

  ‘You’d want yellow rosebuds if you follow my suggestion, not pink, like me. Is Gracie to be a flower-girl?’

  ‘We’re going to ask her. Did you have attendants?’

  ‘I did. They wore pretty cream frocks. My friend Christabel’s mother, Dolly, made them. I hope you’ll look Christabel up! Her husband is my cousin Walter, and her daughter is Dolly, after her mother.’

  ‘All these people you want us to meet! We’ll do our best. But, naturally, Aunt Evie is top of the list!’

  It was a civil ceremony, but old friends, including Megan’s school pal, Kay, came along, as well as a couple of nurses she had known from working at the hospital, and some of the Bigelow’s staff. Others, like Sybil and Lloyd, too far away to attend, sent warm wishes and gifts. There were gifts too from Anna at Red River, the family in England and Grace and Mungo.

  Grace wrote: ‘May you find happiness a second time, like me with dear Mungo.’

  Mattie was sure she would when Megan walked into the registry office on her father
’s arm. She looked so beautiful, Mattie caught her breath. A beam of sunlight through a window glinted on Gracie’s new glasses, the blue frames complementing her taffeta dress. She was slowly blossoming, her grandmother thought happily.

  Young Gracie was swept along by all the excitement, but the magnitude of what was about to happen, the parting from her beloved Mommy Mattie and Grandad Griff, moving to a strange country, suddenly overtook her later, when Mattie discovered her, crying her eyes out in her room, after they realized she’d crept away from the family party back at the house.

  ‘Come here,’ Mattie held out her arms to comfort her.

  ‘Oh, Mommy, I don’t want to leave you!’

  ‘You like Max, don’t you? You must call Megan Mom, now. She loves you so much and it’ll be fun, you know, having a young mother who can do with you all the things I can’t, because I get wheezy, and have to rest up at times….’

  ‘But she told me she loved my dad, and would have married him.’

  ‘That’s true, and she’ll never forget him, I know that, but – she has someone else she cares for now, who cares for her, and for you. Max is a good man and you’re both lucky to have him. We’ll write to each other, eh? You’ll meet all my lovely family in England, and tell me how they are, won’t you? I know you’ll miss us, just as Grandad and I have missed the folk back home all these years, too.’

  Mattie gently removed Gracie’s glasses, lifted the hem of her skirt and, after huffing on them, polished the lenses on her new silk underslip. Gracie’s big dark eyes blinked at her grandmother, but she managed a little smile.

  Mattie said briskly: ‘Now, wipe your eyes, and come and see Grandad and me dance to the old gramophone – that’s if we can clear a space in the middle of the company! We’ll be good for a laugh, even if we’ve forgotten the steps!’

  Griff whispered in Mattie’s ear as they whirled around in their version of the quickstep, ‘You look really nice today, Mattie – still got your trim waist, so I can get my arms round you!’ He demonstrated.