by Wendy Holden
In George’s cedar-scented cupboards, everything was neatly in its place. Pull-out drawers held pyjamas and underwear; larger items were suspended from wooden hangers. In a matter of minutes Nell had located shirts, cardigans and trousers. She went into the small, very clean bathroom and filled a spongebag. But what to put it all in?
In the very bottom of the wardrobe was a snap-lock case. It, too, bore not a speck of dust. Nell wondered what holidays it had been on. Laying it on top of the patchwork quilt and placing the old man’s things in it, she felt as if she were about to go somewhere herself. She snapped the locks together, hurried back down and locked the front door.
‘You won’t recognise this place later!’ Tim called from an upper window of Beggar’s Roost as she hurried back up George’s path. Nell waved back. It was sweet of him to say so, but there could be no chance the cottage would be finished today. Even Rome wasn’t built in a day and Beggar’s Roost was a much bigger job than that.
CHAPTER 42
As she was to visit the hospital straight after work, Nell took George’s case into the weddings department. When Julie found out what it was for, she insisted Nell must take the afternoon off for the visit.
‘Are you sure?’ Nell asked. This was undoubtedly helpful. Getting the visit to George out of the way meant she would be able to see Beggar’s Roost before dark and before her guests arrived.
They would not be staying there, obviously – Jason had already reinstalled Juno’s put-up bed in the honeymoon suite. But it would be useful to assess the extent of what remained to be done. There was also George’s garden to water.
‘You don’t need me for anything?’ she pressed Julie. ‘No Carly and Jed?’
‘Don’t get me started. Got here this morning to find an email from them asking about a father of the bride make-up package.’
‘Father?’
‘You heard me. Here, check out these two, could you?’ She handed Nell a couple of flyers. ‘Have a look at their online offer, see if they’re worth adding to our files.’
‘These two’ were string ensembles who played at receptions. Nell studied the websites. The first, ‘Handel with Care’, was a foursome of fetching female violinists in tiny silver dresses. They pouted kittenishly out of the screen, flicking their long blonde hair. The cellist took full advantage of her instrument’s leg-parting potential.
‘Debussy Galore’ was the other, rival act. They were brunettes with tinier dresses even than Handel with Care. They too could play Michael Bublé and Adele as well as Vivaldi.
There didn’t seem much to choose between them, Nell concluded. ‘I think they’re both fine, if that’s the kind of thing you like,’ she said to Julie.
Julie rolled her eyes. ‘Those string groups are notorious for getting off with every man in sight. Sometimes even with the groom. Personally, I wouldn’t touch any of them with a bargepole. Oh no!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Will’s changed her mind again,’ Julie exclaimed in annoyance. ‘Wants party food stations now. Hot dogs, candyfloss and crêpe stalls. Oh, and fruit machines.’
‘Why don’t they just hold it at a fairground?’
‘Well, if they did,’ Julie pointed out sagely, ‘I’d be out of a job and Pemberton would make a lot less money. Don’t worry,’ she added, disappearing behind her desk and re-emerging holding a file. ‘I’ve got lists of crêpe stalls and fruit machine hirers coming out of my ears.’
Nell made a note. Brides at fruit machines would make a striking image for the wedding brochures she had started to redesign. Work was beginning to take on a definite shape now; an enjoyable one. Sharing an office with Julie was fun and setting up photoshoots and liaising with designers felt almost like old Vanilla times.
Later, Nell arrived at the hospital to find that George was still in his single room. Jasjit bore away the clothes while Nell showed the old man the photographs. His face lit up in delight.
‘Nobby,’ the old man said, pointing at the man in the centre of the group. He had a broad grin and looked very good-humoured.
‘Tell me about Nobby,’ Nell said, feeling for the chair and sitting down.
‘He were the pilot in my Lanc.’
‘Lanc?’
The old fingers tapped at the image of the enormous plane. ‘Lancaster bomber.’ He was watching her closely. Nell was almost certain she could see a flicker of amusement.
‘Oh, yes, of course. Sorry.’
George had sunk back against his pillows again. He held the photograph in his hand and was studying it. The one of himself and Edwina had gone straight up on the bedside table.
‘I trained as a rear gunner. I wanted to be a pilot,’ George said, ‘but the RAF told me there were too many of them. It were Nobby that put me right.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Nobby said, is that what they told you? That old “too many pilots” line?’
‘So it wasn’t true?’ Nell prompted.
The bright eyes locked hers. ‘That’s what I asked Nobby. And he said, it’s not a case of too many pilots, mate. It’s not enough rear gunners. And you know why that is, don’t you?’
The old man paused. ‘Why was it?’ Nell asked.
George patted his chest, wheezing slightly. ‘Because rear gunners didn’t last more than six missions. And you had a life expectancy of twenty-two seconds if you were shot at.’
Nell gasped. ‘That’s what Nobby told you?’
‘And it got me thinking,’ George said.
‘I’m sure it did!’
‘I thought, right, as soon as I’m free today I’ll go and get Edwina. We were getting married, no matter what. We obviously weren’t going to have long together. Pass me the picture, will you?’
Nell obliged, feeling pleasurable anticipation. She had been wondering how to get to the second part of the wedding story.
‘So you managed to deal with the posh Harringtons?’ she prompted.
George did not reply immediately. Nell was just wondering whether she had offended him when she heard him take a deep breath. ‘I never expected them to let us get married. The Harringtons. But for some reason they didn’t stand in our way. Perhaps they had other things to worry about. One of Edwina’s sisters, her husband were a Spitfire pilot. Shot down over the Channel.’ The old man paused, drew another breath. ‘They probably all thought I’d be next.’
‘Well, they got that wrong,’ Nell put in.
The old man chuckled. It turned into a wheeze. ‘They did.’
‘What was the wedding like?’ Nell asked, studying the picture of the happy couple.
‘Very simple. About as simple as it gets, I reckon. Me in me uniform and Edwina in her best suit with a rose from the local park pinned on it.’
‘Ah, so that’s where it came from.’
‘Pale pink, it were. I remember, I picked it myself.’
He stopped and Nell saw the bright eyes momentarily mist over. ‘We just went to the local register office. Dragged a couple of witnesses off o’ t’street. No one had asked any questions. There were a lot of laughter, in fact.’ A smile now stretched the old face.
Nell’s thoughts had flown to her own register office experience with impromptu witnesses. There had not been much laughter at that. And far too many questions. She took a deep breath.
‘No honeymoon, I’m guessing,’ she prompted.
A look from the bright hazel eyes. ‘Nothing like! I were off on a mission that very same night.’
Nell tried to imagine it. To be a just-married teenager, wrenched from the side of the girl you loved. To go out and drop bombs on Hitler. ‘What was a rear gunner, actually? What did you do?’
‘Eyes and ears of the pilot, at the back of the plane. You’d tell him to dive to port or starboard and he did. And the
first thing you’d do, when you got in your turret, was knock out the Perspex in the central panel.’
‘So you could get out?’ Nell guessed.
The old man’s burst of laughter turned into another burst of coughing. ‘At twenty thousand feet? Not likely! You knocked it out because if there were a speck of oil on there, or a dead fly, it might look like an enemy plane. You might put the crew in danger by trying to get away from it.’
‘But didn’t you get cold?’
George was smiling broadly now. ‘Edwina used to ask the exact same question. ‘And I used to tell her about the ice beards we grew on our oxygen masks. There were serious competition to see who could grow the longest.’
Nell chuckled. ‘So it wasn’t all doom and gloom up there.’
‘Not at all. There were a lot of laughter. The lads in the parachute room had a sign up: “If it Fails to Open, Bring it Back”.’
‘No!’ The war was always presented so very soberly and seriously. You forgot that it had been fought, in the main, by teenagers, and high-spirited ones at that.
‘But you survived,’ she said gently.
The old chest, under the striped flannel pyjamas, rose in a deep sigh. ‘Because of my wife. We’d be flying over Berlin, caught in the master searchlight. The dazzle hurt your eyes, you couldn’t see anything. But everyone on the plane knew they’d be out there. German fighters, circling in the dark, ready to swoop in and kill.’ He paused. Nell looked down at her hands. They were clenching the bedclothes.
‘And I’d think of Edwina, so far away. I hoped she’d be asleep and I’d think about her, with her lovely hair spread over the pillow, and I’d think, thank God she can’t see me now.’
Nell watched the soft, bright eyes harden suddenly, and the droopy jaw jut firmly forward. The nostrils flared with resolve. ‘And then,’ the old man rasped, ‘and then I’d think, I’m not going to bloody well die. Not here, not now. Why the hell should I?’
Tears were pricking Nell’s eyes now. It seemed to her that all the wedding theming she had witnessed in Julie’s department, all the accessorising on which the participants placed such emphasis, was merely so much stage-setting. Mere background, a sideshow, not the main event. There was nothing genuinely romantic about a festival food box, still less a fruit machine or Debussy Galore. What George was describing, unadorned as it was, was the real thing.
For all he was old, ill and lonely, he had been lucky. Luckier than her. Yet again, Nell forced her thoughts away from Joey. Incredible to think how recent all that had been; it seemed like years ago, in the life of someone else.
Worn out by talking, George now fell asleep. Nell got up to go. It was time to go and see Jasjit.
‘He seems really well,’ she began optimistically. ‘Very chatty.’
‘He is,’ the nurse cheerfully agreed.
‘Do you, um, think he’ll be ready to go home soon?’
The warm brown eyes looked wary. ‘To be honest with you, we’re not sure he’s going to be able to.’
Nell stared at her in horror. ‘Not going to be able to go home?’
‘No.’
‘Not ever?’
‘To be honest, the way things are looking right now, no.’
It was hard, after hearing this, to go and water George’s beloved garden. Nell decided, on the bus, that she would just have to hope for the best, that Jasjit was wrong. The old man had only been in for a few days, after all. His condition might well improve. Because if it didn’t, where would he go?
It was in this preoccupied state that she hurried down the lane from the bus stop. But then something caught her eye that shot George and his problems straight out of her head.
Beggar’s Roost looked entirely different. A transformation had taken place.
The garden, while far from pristine, looked considerably tidier. The piles of bent and broken plastic had disappeared and the split black sacks of rubbish had gone too. The logs were still there, but stacked neatly in a corner. Albeit yellow and starved-looking, grass was actually visible.
Nell rubbed her eyes. Tim and his team had been even better than their word; they had performed the impossible. She hurried to the cottage windows; they were clean. Not only the glass; the woodwork had been washed too. Underneath all the grime it was white. Looking through the sparkling pane, Nell saw that yet greater wonders had been wrought.
The bomb site inside was no more. The floor had been swept to expose varnished oak boards and the walls had been whitewashed. The graffiti had disappeared.
Nell gasped and ran round to the rear. Here, too, the formerly chaotic garden had been made orderly. The toilets had all disappeared, as had the bath. Nell looked round, frowning. Had she imagined it? Had it all really been there?
The mouldy dishes in the kitchen sink had gone. The sink had been scoured and now shone. Nose pressed to the clean kitchen window, Nell could see right into the room. The walls were white; freshly painted. There was no furniture, but nor was there any rubbish.
Stunned, she inserted one of the two keys into the back door. It opened easily and a smell of paint and bleach rushed into her nostrils. She felt that she preferred it to a million scented candles.
The excavation – there was no other word for it – had uncovered some pretty architectural features. There were some nice old fireplaces in the downstairs rooms which were easy to picture in the winter with flames leaping romantically in the hearths. Someone had even left a piece of paper in each grate saying ‘Swept’. They had thought of everything.
Any fears that the work did not extend upstairs vanished as soon as Nell set foot on the little twisting staircase. Varnished, as George Farley’s was, it was just as clean and led up to the same higgledy-piggledy landing where steps at different levels led off in different directions to three bedrooms.
One of the bedrooms was tiny; perfect for Juno, Nell thought. Another was bigger, with a sloping roof. That could be Rachel’s. Yet another, the counterpart to George’s, had a view of the Beggar’s Roost garden. This would be hers, Nell vowed; from here she would watch as the lawn re-greened itself and the flowers she would plant grew and flowered.
All the rooms had deep-set windowsills and little casements with hand-wrought clasps. The bathroom was sparkling clean and seemed entirely fit for purpose. It had a wooden floor and exposed beams in the roof.
Nell felt a great rush of joy. What had been uninhabitable was now a dream home. It was a miracle. And just in time.
CHAPTER 43
So late had Juno and Rachel arrived from London, the fact that they were staying in the honeymoon suite of the Edenville Arms was actually the preferable option. But Beggar’s Roost was, at least, in a state to show them now and they spent a happy Saturday morning exploring it.
Juno rushed from room to room. She loved her tiny bedroom. But her real focus throughout was the Chestlock Pavilion Theatre and the moment that night, at 7.30 p.m. precisely, that the curtain was to rise on Murderous Death. Her excitement was palpable and she was quite obviously despairing at ever living that long.
Rachel, meanwhile, was taking notes and drawing maps.
‘What are you doing?’ Nell asked her.
‘Thinking about furniture. A fridge and some sort of cooker’s top of the list.’
Nell, who’d been unsure where to start, felt grateful for her friend’s practical input.
She left her to it while she and Juno went out to tend to George’s garden. Juno immediately busied herself filling the two green watering cans at the outside tap. ‘I’ve never seen so many flowers,’ she said, with a city dweller’s awe.
Nell smiled. She was almost used to it now, this profusion of beauty at Edenville and Pemberton. But it was still new enough to fill her with wonder too and she looked round now at the sheer range the old man had called into being. Rainbow bank
s of pompom dahlias blended into firework displays of red-hot pokers mixed with coral-pink gladioli and delphiniums ranging from palest powder blue to a deep and royal purple. Bushes rioted with raspberry-ripple roses and and their extravagant pink heads of peonies erupted between dark green leaves. Orange blossom was everywhere, pouring over the walls and fences like sweet-scented cream.
She forced to the back of her mind the possibility that George would never work in his garden again. Jasjit had to be wrong. He had to recover and come home.
She watched Juno exploring the vegetable garden and the neat rows of lettuce. ‘He has five different types,’ she reported, hopping about between the lollo rosso and the oak leaf.
So exciting had been the garden, Nell noticed, she hadn’t mentioned Murderous Death once.
Afterwards, they headed for Chestlock, where the local superstore provided the cooker and fridge, plus all the required glassware, cookware, cutlery and bed linen. Before long, Nell’s trolley was piled high and she handed over her credit card at the checkout with a shaking hand. Even at supermarket prices, and on the principle of only buying bare necessities, equipping Beggar’s Roost wasn’t cheap. Thank goodness the sale of Gardiner Road was back on and she could afford it.
‘Now for the fun bit,’ said Rachel. ‘The dining chairs, table, armchairs. Lamps. Sofa.’
Doubt filled Nell. Interiors had never been her strongest point. The ability to fling a few cushions about and link a room together was one she conspicuously lacked. ‘IKEA?’
Rachel looked appalled. ‘No. The antiques shop. There’s a brilliant one in Chestlock.’
‘Is there?’ It was somehow typical of Rachel to know her local town better than she knew it herself. ‘I can’t afford antiques, though,’ Nell warned.
‘Not antiquey antiques,’ Rachel corrected. ‘More, you know, vintage. Pine tables, chipped enamel buckets, carpet beaters.’
‘I don’t want a carpet beater. I don’t have a carpet.’ Nor did she want a chipped enamel bucket.
