by Lily Baxter
Contents
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Lily Baxter
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Copyright
About the Book
A compelling wartime novel of love, loss and rememberance from the bestselling author of The Shopkeeper’s Daughter.
August 1914. With the approach of war about to bring tragedy and heartache to families all over England, Elsie longs to do her duty for King and country.
She heads to London to act as an interpreter for thousands of Belgium refugees. But although she enjoys her work, she longs to do more. And when the opportunity arises she joins the foreign office, travelling to France as an undercover agent.
When circumstances force her to return home, she joins the FANYs. And on the battlefields of Europe, she must find the courage to help save lives, each day hoping that one day she’ll be reunited with the man she loves.
About the Author
Lily Baxter lives in Dorset. She is the author of Poppy’s War, We’ll Meet Again, Spitfire Girl, The Girls in Blue and The Shopkeeper’s Daughter. She also writes under the name of Dilly Court.
Also by Lily Baxter
Poppy’s War
We’ll Meet Again
Spitfire Girl
The Girls in Blue
The Shopkeeper’s Daughter
Writing as Dilly Court
Mermaids Singing
The Dollmaker’s Daughters
Tilly True
The Best of Sisters
The Cockney Sparrow
A Mother’s Courage
The Constant Heart
A Mother’s Promise
The Cockney Angel
A Mother’s Wish
The Ragged Heiress
A Mother’s Secret
Cinderella Sister
A Mother’s Trust
The Lady’s Maid
The Best of Daughters
The Workhouse Girl
A Loving Family
The Beggar Maid
In Love and War
Lily Baxter
For Ann and Bill Spivey
Chapter One
Sutton Darcy, Dorset, August 1914
THE SOUND OF marching feet had brought the whole village out onto the main street to see the newly formed Pals battalion go off to war. Elsie Mead had been on her way home to Tan Cottage, having just left Colonel Mason’s house on the edge of the village where she had been dressing Mrs Mason’s hair. Cora Mason was many years younger than her husband and considered herself to be a leader of fashion, even though she had to make do with the minimum of servants to manage her household. Without the benefit of a personal maid she often called upon Elsie to put her hair up in the elaborate Pompadour style, made famous by the Gibson Girls at the end of Queen Victoria’s reign, and Elsie had not the heart to tell Cora that this was no longer the height of fashion. Today of all days Cora said she wanted to stand at the colonel’s side and make him proud, and Elsie had done her best to execute the complicated coiffure while listening politely to Cora’s incessant chatter. She had answered in monosyllables and nods of her head where appropriate, but her thoughts were with the young men who were leaving home to fight for their country. She had known all of them since they attended the village school together, and now they were going off to face the horrors of war.
She stopped to wave to the Dodd brothers, Luke, Frank and Jim, whose father was a fisherman and would now have to find another crew. Mickey Fowler winked at her and tipped his cap and his brother Joe blew her a kiss. She could not help thinking that the game birds on the Winter family’s estate would be safer in the absence of the Fowler boys. They were a wild pair, but they were not bad at heart. She had danced with both of them at the last harvest supper, but this year the celebrations would be shadowed by worry and even loss. It did not bear thinking about. It was a ragtag band that set off on the great adventure and their young faces glowed with excitement. She made an effort to send them away with a cheerful smile, but she had a feeling of foreboding as she made her way home, stopping first at the doctor’s surgery to collect a bottle of laudanum for her sick mother.
It was a hot day and the sun beat down on her bare head as she walked along the lane between hedgerows heavy with dusty green foliage and busy with the wildlife that lived and foraged in the knotted roots and branches. Hedge sparrows popped up like tiny automatons and disappeared just as quickly. Field mice rustled the leaves and hedgehogs curled up amongst the dead leaves and slept until dusk when they came out to look for food. It was all so familiar, and yet the cloudless sky and summer sun were overshadowed by world events that had reached out to touch a sleepy English village.
Elsie stopped and looked round as someone called her name.
‘Elsie, wait.’ Phyllis Piper, one of the housemaids who worked at Darcy Hall, came running towards her. ‘Wait a minute,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’ve been sent to see if your ma is well enough to return to work. We’re shorthanded because two of the housemaids have left to find jobs in the town, and some of the other girls are threatening to do the same. There are plenty of jobs vacant with so many men enlisting, and they’re taking on women.’
‘Ma is confined to bed, Phyllis. I don’t know when she’ll be well enough to work again.’
‘Mrs Tranter will skin me alive if I go back without someone to give us a hand. Miss Marianne is arriving today and there’s a big dinner party planned for tomorrow. We’re going to need all the help we can get.’
Elsie eyed her thoughtfully. ‘I suppose I could help out for a couple of days. I’ve applied for several jobs as a lady’s maid but most of them want someone to live in, and I can’t leave Ma while she’s so ill.’
Phyllis took off her straw hat and fanned herself vigorously. ‘You was unlucky that old Mrs Tonbridge popped off so sudden. I’ve heard that Rose Hill is up for sale.’
‘I’d been with the old lady since I left school. I did everything for her and she was good to me. Positions like that don’t come up very often.’
‘It won’t be the sort of work you’re used to, Elsie, but if you don’t mind doing the cleaning it will be a big help.’ Phyllis moved a little closer, glancing over her shoulder as if expecting to find eavesdroppers lurking behind the hedge. ‘They say in the kitchen that Miss Marianne’s aunt wants to see her married off as soon as possible and out of the way.’
Elsie was in a hurry to get home but she could not resist a bit of gossip that might cheer her mother up. ‘Surely it’s up to Miss Marianne’s parents to look to her future.’
‘Ah, yes, but they’re still in India and will be for some time. Miss Marianne’s twenty-first birthday is tomorrow.’
‘And they’re planning a party for her. That’s as it should be, Phyllis.’
‘It’s more than that, Elsie. Miss Marianne will come into her majority tomorrow, and she won’t need her aunt and uncle to look after her. Not that she ever paid much atte
ntion to anything they said, but now she’s coming home from that posh finishing school in Switzerland we’re expecting fireworks.’ Phyllis grabbed Elsie’s arm, her eyes brimming with excitement. ‘We think she might tell Mr and Mrs Winter to pack up and leave. They won’t like that because they’ve got used to treating Darcy Hall as if it was theirs, and we all know that they’re as poor as church mice.’
Elsie threw back her head and laughed. ‘You’re a terrible gossip, Phyllis.’
Offended, Phyllis shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s God’s honest truth. But what shall I tell Mrs Tranter?’
‘I should be looking for war work, but I suppose another few days at home won’t hurt, and I don’t really want to go away while Ma’s sick.’
‘Does that mean you’ll help out? I’m desperate, Elsie, or I wouldn’t ask.’
‘I need the money, so I’ll do it.’
Phyllis slapped her on the back. ‘Thank God for that. I’ll go back and give Mrs Tranter the good news. Can you come this afternoon?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘That’s the spirit.’ Phyllis rammed her hat on her head and hurried off in the direction of Darcy Hall, leaving Elsie to go on her way.
The small bedroom in Tan Cottage was shrouded in darkness and stuffy with the sickly sweet smell of chronic illness. Flies trapped behind closed curtains buzzed and battered the windowpanes in their attempts to escape into the sunlight, and the bedsprings creaked with the invalid’s smallest movement.
Monique Mead lay propped up on pillows, her face as white as the cotton sheet that was drawn up to her neck. Dark smudges underlined her eyes and her thin hand plucked at the counterpane as she controlled her breathing with difficulty, but she managed a smile for her daughter. ‘Did it go well?’
‘Mrs Mason was satisfied with the result, Ma. More important, how are you?’ Elsie perched on the edge of the bed. ‘Are you hungry?’
Monique shook her head. ‘Not really, but I am thirsty.’ She began to cough and reached for a hanky. Elsie’s heart sank when she saw the telltale flecks of blood. ‘I’ll get you some fresh water and you must take your medicine. I asked Dr Hancock to call.’
Monique shook her head, lapsing into her native French as she did when overcome with emotion. ‘Non, chérie. Non.’ She drew a faltering breath. ‘We can’t afford it.’
Elsie laid her hand on her mother’s brow, and felt the heat of fever. ‘Yes, we can. I’ve got some work at Darcy Hall, and Mrs Mason gave me a tip. She likes to be generous with her husband’s money.’ She stood up. ‘Don’t worry, Ma. Everything will be all right, you’ll see.’ She spoke with more conviction than she was feeling. Her mother’s condition had deteriorated and Dr Hancock was not optimistic. ‘Your mother ought to be admitted to a sanatorium,’ he had said on his last visit. But of course that was out of the question. There was no money for private treatment and the public wards were overcrowded. Monique had a morbid fear of hospitals and with good reason, having watched her husband’s slow and painful death. Elsie’s father had served under Colonel James Winter in the Boer War, and had been invalided home but had succumbed to his wounds in a military hospital. Memories of sitting at his bedside were still fresh in Elsie’s mind even though she had only been eight years old when he died, and her mother murmured his name during recurrent bouts of fever. Elsie was painfully aware that the disease of the lungs was slowly consuming her mother’s frail body, but she tried to push such thoughts to the back of her mind as she hurried outside to the communal pump and drew a bucket of water.
Elsie was in the scullery at Darcy Hall washing the dishes after luncheon had been served above stairs when bells started jangling and a buzz of excitement was followed by the sound of pattering feet. Phyllis poked her head round the door. ‘Come on. We’ve got to go outside and welcome Miss Marianne home.’
Elsie dried her hands on a tea towel and followed the rest of the servants outside into the stable yard. They scurried across the cobbles, chattering excitedly as they made their way to the front of the Jacobean manor house where they stood in line waiting for the motor car to come to a halt.
‘New-fangled contraption,’ Cook muttered under her breath. ‘Give me a carriage and pair any day.’
Mrs Tranter, the housekeeper, shot her a withering look. ‘Shh.’
Cook’s lips tightened into a thin pencil line but she knew better than to argue.
Elsie was almost exactly the same age as Miss Marianne Winter, and she was mildly curious to see how she had turned out after her two years in the posh finishing school. She had seen her in the distance on the rare occasions when she had been permitted to accompany her mother to work, but she had not been allowed to stray into parts of the house or garden frequented by the family. Marianne Winter had spoken to her once when Elsie had been helping to groom one of the horses, and then it had only been to challenge her right to be there in the first place. Elsie had told her to mind her own business and had received a stern lecture on manners from the head groom, but Marianne had merely laughed and led her pony to the mounting block.
Elsie craned her neck to look at the fashionably dressed young woman who alighted from the chauffeur-driven motor car. As a child she had heard the servants mutter about a passing resemblance between them, but now, despite the difference in their clothes and the way they wore their blonde hair, looking at Marianne Winter was like seeing a mirror image of herself. She was aware of sideways glances from the kitchen maids as they bobbed curtseys. Elsie remained stiffly upright. Such a show of subservience seemed very feudal and outdated, and she was not dependent on the Winter family for her living. If anything her brief experience of labouring in the kitchen made her even more determined to find herself a well-paid job so that her mother need never return to menial work.
Marianne smiled graciously and had a few words with Mrs Tranter and Cook, briefly acknowledging the underlings before entering the house to be greeted by her aunt and uncle. Soames, the butler, closed the double doors and Mrs Tranter ordered everyone to return to their work.
Phyllis fell into step beside Elsie. ‘Did you see the outfit she was wearing? I daresay it was straight from Paris. It must have cost a fortune.’
‘I expect it did.’
‘Aren’t you envious, Elsie? I know I am.’
‘Not really. I don’t think she’s happy.’
Phyllis stared at her open-mouthed. ‘How can you say that? How could she be miserable when she’s got looks and money?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just a feeling.’
‘You and your feelings,’ Phyllis said, giggling. ‘I remember when we was in Miss Murray’s class at school, you was always making excuses for the old bat, when the rest of us hated her.’
‘She had a miserable home life. Her father was a drunkard and a bully. He went to prison for beating a man half to death.’
‘Stop dawdling, you two.’ Mrs Tranter’s voice echoed round the stable yard. ‘There’s work to be done.’
Later that afternoon, Elsie arrived home to find Dr Hancock just about to leave Tan Cottage. He greeted her with a serious look on his lined face. ‘Monique tells me that you’ve been doing her job at Darcy Hall.’
‘I’m just filling in, doctor. I hope to find war work so that I can make life easier for my mother.’
He shook his head. ‘She is a very sick woman, my dear. You will need to be very strong for her, but you must prepare yourself for the inevitable.’
‘I know.’ Despite her determination not to cry, Elsie’s eyes welled with tears and she swallowed hard. ‘I’ve seen her slipping away from me, day by day.’
He laid his hand on her arm. ‘Have you anyone you can call on to be with you?’
Elsie shook her head. ‘No, sir. Ma’s family disowned her when she married an Englishman. I’ve never met them.’
‘What about your father’s family?’
‘He was brought up in an orphanage and enlisted when he was just a boy. There is no one.’
‘Call m
e day or night if her condition worsens.’ He gave her a tired smile and went to untether his horse. He climbed onto the trap and at a flick of the reins the animal ambled off down the lane.
Elsie hurried into the house and went upstairs to tell her mother about Miss Marianne’s return home, and to pass on messages from the kitchen maids wishing her a speedy recovery. A smile hovered on Monique’s lips as she drifted off into a laudanum-induced sleep, and Elsie went downstairs to eat her supper of bread and cheese. Miss Marianne would be dining on trout caught in the river that ran through the estate, followed by grouse which only the day before had been roaming in the heather. Sent by train from Scotland, the birds would be roasted and served with a red wine sauce. Cook had been preparing the crowning glory of the welcome home meal that afternoon, and the sight and scent of the strawberry parfait had made Elsie’s mouth water.
She finished her meal and made herself a cup of tea, which she took into the small garden at the back of the cottage. She had not had much time to weed the vegetable patch, coming home late every evening from Rose Hill. Convolvulus had all but strangled the white roses that her mother loved so dearly, and nettles grew where once she had tended potatoes, carrots, parsnips and onions. In winter there had been cabbages to pick and the root vegetables they had managed to store, but this year there was nothing other than weeds and wild poppies.
The sun was plummeting in a fireball and the sky was streaked with scarlet and orange. Purple shadows lengthened and a cool breeze ruffled Elsie’s hair, but the smell of the kitchens still lingered on her clothes and her hands were red and sore from the use of washing soda and strong soap. The feeling of fatigue was overwhelming, and when Elsie finished her tea she went indoors to get ready for bed. She had shared her mother’s room until her illness but now she slept on a flock-filled mattress in the corner of the kitchen. She checked on Monique before lying down to sleep, but even at rest she slept lightly, waking at the slightest sound, ready to answer the faintest call from the sick room.
