Songs of Spring

by Amy Myers

George grinned. ‘You mean well, Caroline, but keep out of it. Look after your own love life.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  George groaned. ‘Sorry.’

  There was something else she wanted to discuss with Father while she was here, but it was not until Father had returned from early communion on Sunday that she had the opportunity to do so. Once Sunday breakfast had been a formal occasion, but no longer. The dishes were still kept on hot plates, but whereas they would have been devoured after family prayers at one go, now one was lucky to have a companion. The Rectory clock had run down, and would it ever be rewound? Today, however, both her parents were here.

  ‘Do you think the cinema will be rebuilt, Father?’ It seemed important to her that it was, for it had been Isabel’s great achievement.

  ‘I doubt if Swinford-Browne will do so, and you know yourself that he’s been wanting to close it for a long time. A great pity, in my opinion.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have said so once.’ Father had been vehemently opposed to the cinema when it was opened in 1914.

  ‘Times change, even for me,’ Laurence sighed. ‘There is no doubt it has become a popular meeting place for the village, but even apart from business considerations, Swinford-Browne has taken Isabel’s death very hard, and I imagine he’s all too happy to walk away from the problem.’

  ‘Suppose I talk to him?’ Caroline offered. ‘Why don’t we invite them to lunch today?’

  ‘I couldn’t, Caroline,’ Elizabeth said immediately. ‘Not yet.’

  Caroline understood. She remembered the first time the Swinford-Brownes had ever come to lunch, on Easter Sunday 1914. That was the day when Isabel’s engagement to Robert had been announced. Caroline had hated the Swinford-Brownes ever since. Now such dislike seemed irrelevant and even misplaced. ‘I’ll go to the Mountain tomorrow morning,’ she said resignedly, ‘if he’ll see me.’

  After leaving Ashden, the Swinford-Brownes, having moved to East Grinstead, had chosen a home even ghastlier than The Towers. Caroline began to regret her impulsive gesture to come here once more a-pleading at the Swinford-Brownes’ feet.

  It was Edith who awaited her in the morning room, and stripped by grief of all the pretensions she usually assumed, she had a dignity that had been lacking in her previous bearing.

  ‘How nice of you to come, Caroline.’ She appeared to mean it, and guiltily Caroline was aware that she would never have dreamt of visiting them if it hadn’t been for the cinema.

  ‘Has Robert been told?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘We didn’t know what to do, my dear. We thought, if we told him, he might give up hope for himself, yet if we didn’t that he’d hate us for not telling him. Patricia took care of it, and consulted the Red Cross. I believe he now knows, for she had a brief letter of acknowledgement.’

  Edith’s face was forlorn and no wonder. Robert’s relations with his parents had been strained to say the least after he decided to volunteer for action. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll have any grandchildren now,’ Edith continued. ‘I don’t see Patricia marrying.’

  Nor did Caroline. Patricia Swinford-Browne was strident and bossy, if good-hearted; the women’s police force suited her down to the ground, and she could not see Patricia forfeiting power for marriage.

  At that moment William Swinford-Browne arrived to join them. His bulky shape, which had led to the Lilley girls nicknaming him the William Pear, had given way to a very shrivelled pear since she had last seen him at the funeral.

  ‘Good of you to visit us, Caroline,’ he greeted her gruffly.

  Her guilt increased, and she spent a long time talking generally with them before she introduced the subject she had come to discuss. ‘What shall you do about the cinema, Mr Swinford-Browne?’ They had never progressed beyond this formality. Caroline hadn’t the slightest inclination to address him as Uncle William, and neither did she feel warm enough towards him – or had ever been invited – to call him by his Christian name.

  ‘I don’t want to go near the place. I’ll sell up when the war’s over.’

  ‘That may be a long time. Won’t you consider rebuilding?’

  Edith burst into tears, and William glared at her. ‘That’s a trifle on the callous side, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. I’ve thought about it a lot,’ Caroline said earnestly. ‘I know we were against the cinema when you first built it, but now it’s a great force for good. People will need it again once the shock wears off.’

  ‘Maybe they will. I won’t though. I couldn’t bear to look at the place,’ William grunted.

  ‘How can you think of people laughing at Charlie Chaplin right where your own sister died?’ Edith moaned.

  Caroline flushed, then steeled herself. She had never thought this would be easy. ‘It’s just that Isabel put so much love and enthusiasm into building up the cinema. If it closes, it would look as if her work had come to nothing. By allowing her to run it, you were the making of Isabel, Mr Swinford-Browne. It gave her much happiness for she felt she was accomplishing something worthwhile. She would have hated to see it all go for nothing.’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ William admitted grudgingly. ‘It doesn’t change my mind though.’

  ‘If it were rebuilt, a memorial to Isabel in the foyer could be a permanent tribute. Otherwise her work would seem to have been pointless.’

  ‘Oh, William. Caroline’s right.’ Edith rapidly changed sides.

  He glared at her too, but deliberated for a moment. At last he said, ‘All right, Caroline. Get it fixed up as and when you can. And cheaply. Don’t splash my money about. You’ll have to find someone local to run it too. Can’t offer them much.’

  Caroline was well aware of that, for Isabel had frequently complained of the pittance she received. She’d take one problem at a time though. First catch your turtle …

  She was pleased with her victory, for it seemed something she had done for Isabel, and hurried home, hoping to talk it over with her mother. She had expected to find her in the glory-hole where she did her agricultural rota work, but there was no sign of her. Defeated, she went back to the kitchen to ask Mrs Dibble where she was.

  ‘Gone over to the Dower House about a Rat and Sparrow Club,’ she said.

  ‘A what? And why Lady Hunney?’ Caroline was incredulous. Mother loathed Maudie as she was not so affectionately known. Her mother’s work on the County Executive Committee was increasing all the time, with the campaign to find yet more land to plough more intense than ever before, and the harvest rotas needing constant juggling. Nevertheless, in the old days Maudie would be last on the list to call for help.

  ‘She goes over there quite often to see her ladyship now. She gets on with her better than with her ladyship upstairs.’

  Anyone would, Caroline thought, amused. It was odd to think of her mother and Lady Hunney drawn closer together through common bereavement. That tennis party of 1914 seemed so long ago; there had been but little thought of war, save for a tiny cloud on a distant horizon. She and Reggie had become engaged that day and Isabel was planning her wedding. The tennis balls pit-patted in the warm sunshine, she could hear them now echoing in her ears. So long ago, but those happy voices were still clear: Isabel’s, Felicia’s, George’s, Tilly’s, her own ‘Because I’m going to marry you,’ followed by Reggie’s ‘You’ll never cry again, Caroline. I promise, I promise.’

  Caroline got up quickly from the kitchen table as Agnes came in carrying the tea tray. She looked white with exhaustion. ‘Oh, Agnes, let me help you.’

  ‘I’m all right, Miss Caroline.’ She let her take the tray from her all the same. ‘I’ve been overdoing it a bit. The baby’s due on the 29th, and Jamie’s coming home tonight on leave. That’s bad timing, isn’t it? Oh, Miss Caroline, it doesn’t seem right me being here, having a baby, and poor Mrs Lilley losing her grandchild. I offered to go, but she said no, but I do feel awful.’

  Late that night, not long after Jamie arrived, his second child decided to arrive a week ear
ly. Caroline was awoken by the commotion as Jamie thundered down the stairs for Mrs Dibble, Mrs Dibble telephoned to Mrs Hay, and in due course, with the whole house roused, Mrs Hay sent for Dr Ryde because Agnes was having such a difficult time.

  Caroline joined her parents in the kitchen where Mrs Dibble had ordered Myrtle to make cocoa and tea to see them through the night. Her mother looked as if she were about to cry, and Caroline searched desperately for something to take her mind off Isabel’s baby.

  ‘What, Mother, is a Rat and Sparrow Club?’ she asked brightly.

  It was not the most sensible of questions for two o’clock in the morning, and her mother stared at her blankly.

  ‘Like a cockfight?’ George slouched sleepily in for his mug of cocoa.

  It was Percy who answered in the end. ‘Club set up to do away with vermin. They arrange shoots.’

  ‘But sparrows aren’t vermin.’

  ‘When they eat my crops, they are. I don’t plough up tennis courts to feed them.’

  ‘At the front,’ George said quietly, ‘a sparrow’s chirp is a precious thing.’

  Caroline said no more.

  They returned to their bedrooms to try to sleep, but renewed commotion towards dawn sent Caroline scuttling up to Agnes’s room in her dressing gown to see what was going on.

  Jamie, as white as a sheet, was in the doorway of Agnes’s bedroom, but he was grinning.

  ‘A boy?’

  ‘It’s a girl, and I’m glad, Miss Caroline. That I am. Boys go to war, so my little ones will be safe.’

  Safe? There was no guarantee of that, but she said nothing save to congratulate him, and since she was leaving early to return to the office, asked if she might see the baby. She found her mother already in the bedroom. ‘Poor Agnes is very weak, Caroline. She’s had a bad time. What are you going to call her, Jamie?’

  Agnes roused herself. ‘Jamie and me – if you’ve no objection – well, we’d like to call her Isabel. If it’s not presumptuous. If it won’t upset you.’

  ‘I can’t think—’ Elizabeth tried again. ‘I can’t think of anything nicer.’ She burst into tears, and Caroline bent over to kiss Agnes’s forehead.

  Chapter Ten

  ‘I don’t want to march, Caroline, but they say I must,’ Felicia said crossly.

  Caroline was flying around her bedroom endeavouring to smarten up her WAAC uniform – why did it have to be such a drab colour? – and to get ready herself for the afternoon’s parade through London of women war workers. Felicia looked almost as wan as she did, thanks to the grey-green uniform and veil that the nurses at Endell Street Hospital wore. Felicia’s uniform had been a problem. In terms of formal training, she was an unqualified nurse; in experience, however, she was more than qualified, and Endell Street treated her as such.

  ‘I hate being forced to parade like a trophy,’ Felicia continued viciously.

  ‘You can’t blame them,’ Caroline pointed out. ‘There has to be a contingent of nurses from the hospital and with your fame you have to be there clinking your medals.’

  ‘You’re used to marching in processions. I’m not.’

  ‘I helped organise one, three years ago,’ Caroline pointed out patiently. ‘I then marched with it. It poured with rain and my feet hurt. It doesn’t make me an expert on processions.’

  ‘Compared with me you are.’

  ‘You’re not usually so obstinate.’ Caroline struggled not to laugh at this new side of Felicia.

  ‘That’s because you haven’t seen much of me these last few years.’

  ‘No,’ Caroline agreed. It was hard to believe that her sisters had changed for ever. Once, she had supposed that when this war ended it would vanish, along with all its effects on people’s lives. It was plain now that would never happen.

  ‘I can’t stand it, you know, Caroline,’ Felicia said despondently. ‘I hate being told what to do. I shall have to go back to France, at least to the hospital. What I really want is to return to the front though.’

  Caroline groaned. ‘The doctors, everyone, even Tilly, have said how stupid that would be.’

  ‘I don’t have to take notice of Tilly. I’m free there, Caroline. I can achieve good and see myself achieving it. At Endell Street, it’s the Manor Hospital all over again: rules, regulations, and neat white beds. Excellent, but it’s not me.’

  Caroline struggled to subdue panic. She had to be careful, or she would just make Felicia more determined than ever, yet all she could think of was that Felicia might be killed, just when she’d thought her safe. George’s leaving again was bad enough, but he had no choice. So far he and Felicia had led charmed lives, surviving against the odds. How much longer could that luck hold?

  ‘Think what it would mean to Father and Mother.’ Caroline wanted to say, ‘think what it would mean to me,’ but she could not.

  ‘I can’t. I have to do what I do best.’

  For the first time that she could remember, Caroline’s patience with her sister snapped. ‘Why? What makes you so privileged, Felicia? We’d all like to do what we do best, for heaven’s sake, but this is war, and we can’t. We’re all tiny spokes in a huge wheel, until it’s over. After that, we might have the privilege of doing what we like.’

  Felicia stared at her in amazement at this outburst. ‘Very well, put it this way. I can do the best job out there. Save more lives.’

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’ Caroline retaliated furiously. ‘How can you compare what effect you are having on the seriously wounded patients in Endell Street with your work at the front? You’re not God. You don’t seem to realise you’re famous, Felicia, and the hospital quite rightly want to use the fact to help get these men well. There are other women, fitter than you, working at the front-line hospitals and running advanced dressing posts. Why do you want to go back so much? Vanity? Or’ – a shot in the dark – ‘as an escape?’

  Felicia was roused too. ‘Escape from what, might I ask?’

  ‘You know very well. From your own problems. What to do when the war ends, Luke or Daniel? We’ve all got problems, sister dear. Myself and Yves, Mother and Father, all of us. Stop being so selfish, and take Tilly’s advice to stay here. And mine,’ she added for good measure.

  Felicia rose to her feet, a red spot of anger on each cheekbone. ‘I’ll make my own way to Hyde Park.’ With that, she marched out of the flat.

  Ruefully, Caroline examined her conscience, but to her surprise for once she found it reasonably clear.

  Hyde Park was the gathering point for the parade, in which each main category of worker was represented, including VADs, the Women’s Legion, the WRNS, the Land Girls, the Forestry girls, munitions workers, and of course the WAACs of which she was one. Looking at the vast hordes milling into order under a mercifully sunny sky, Caroline thought about the 1915 demonstration which she had helped to organise. They had been marching to demand the right to work, and today’s parade was proof of its success. She felt humbly proud, and sorry that Felicia did not share her mood. There was no hope of finding her here, and she did not try.

  Yves had been occupied during the last few days with preparations – mostly shrouded in deep secrecy – for King Albert’s visit to Britain, which would begin on 5th July, in six days’ time. Four days after that, he pointed out, His Majesty would be reviewing the fleet in the Firth of Forth, including a visit to an American battleship operating with the British squadron, and before and after that he would be at Buckingham Palace with the King and Queen of England. His liaison officer was, therefore, busy, he replied when yesterday she complained mildly of never seeing him.

  ‘I’m going to see the King too,’ she had told him amicably.

  ‘You?’ That had shaken him.

  ‘Yes, me,’ she replied with dignity. ‘You don’t object, do you?’

  He looked at her suspiciously. ‘A personal interview?’

  ‘Yes. Myself and a hundred thousand other women packed in the quadrangle of the Palace. Still,’ she added, la
ughing, ‘the King is coming to speak to us, and the Queen too if we’re lucky.’

  ‘Naturally. Miss Caroline Lilley is a famous young lady, as well as beautiful and indispensable to a humble Belgian soldier.’

  Indispensable was an unfortunate word and it hung heavily between them. ‘At work, perhaps,’ she had answered, to which Yves had no reply.

  After the parade finished, Caroline felt elated. She was but one of the hundreds of thousands of tiny spokes that turned the war, and she loved it. She reproved herself for self-righteousness, but it was difficult not to feel that way while the King was praising all they’d achieved. That wasn’t his reaction when that poor debutante had pleaded for the vote at his feet four years ago.

  That evening she was dining at Simon’s house with Tilly, Penelope and Felicia – or so she had thought. Unfortunately, Felicia had telephoned, she was informed on arrival, that she wasn’t free to come. Was there any significance in her choice of words? Caroline wondered somewhat guiltily. Tilly, who was now driving for the FANYs in London, which in effect meant for the Red Cross, told her not to worry about it. Felicia was Felicia, and had a marked objection to being told what to do, as Tilly herself had found. Luckily, Tilly could outflank even Felicia’s obstinacy, but Caroline hadn’t yet learnt the knack. Penelope had followed Tilly into the FANYs with great glee, tired, she had proclaimed, of handing out teacups at canteens and food kitchens.

  Simon observed: ‘She should be driving for the Germans. It would do more to help the war effort than anything else I can think of.’

  ‘Stop being so ancient, Father,’ Penelope countered blithely. ‘Just because you drive at five miles an hour and would prefer a man walking with a red flag in front of you, you think the rest of the world should stand still with you.’

  ‘She’s right, Simon,’ Tilly agreed. ‘That Daimler of yours is like a greyhound on a lead.’

  ‘I would point out,’ Simon replied mildly, ‘that we have to conserve what petrol we have.’

  ‘Remember that Austin of yours,’ Caroline broke in hastily, ‘is still stored at Ashden.’