War Brides

by Helen Bryan

  “How do they know your French is perfect? Have you already been speaking to these people behind my back? I tell you again, no daughter of mine will join the SOE or those half-baked Auxi whatnots!”

  “But Father, they’re the only organizations that have any work I could do—be reasonable! Please, just listen! They know my French is perfect because, yes, I went to see them today, and this darling man asked me questions in French the whole morning. He said he was frightfully impressed.”

  “For the last time, it’s out of the question! And as you’re still under age you cannot go without my consent.”

  “Oh bother!” If Frances hadn’t been sitting down she would have stamped her foot. “I’m twenty! If I’d been a boy I would’ve had a real war job, flying Spitfires or Hurricanes or something. Being a Land Girl is all very well for some, and I thought it would be a lark when I joined up with Elsie—she’s Aunt Muriel’s housemaid—but looking after pigs and digging potatoes and milking cows and getting all muddy in the fields and wrestling with hay that doesn’t want to be baled is so tedious and I can do more—I know I can. I feel wasted. I loathe milking. The cows simply loathe me—and they kick. If I’m to do my bit fighting the Germans I want to do more than hold a milking pail steady.”

  The admiral’s patience was evaporating. He was a very busy man and Frances—as usual when her heart was set on something—was digging in her heels. But it was out of the question. Frances would remain in the Land Army at Crowmarsh Priors no matter how many strings he had to pull to keep her there. Muriel Marchmont was right. The sooner his daughter was married the better.

  “I didn’t ask you to come up to London to discuss your latest madcap idea, but for an entirely different reason,” he began. Frances had opened her mouth and her eyes had the steely glint that presaged an argument or tantrum, but she said nothing. The admiral continued: “As your father and as a member of the War Cabinet, I insist you oblige the country and me by doing your bit with the Land Army. We’ll have no more talk about Gubbins’s nonsense. Now, to change the subject, your godmother tells me you’re seeing a good deal of a certain young man—Hugo de Balfort. A bit of a bright young thing, according to Muriel, and—”

  “Father, calling someone a ‘bright young thing’ is too old-fashioned for words! But I can’t imagine why Aunt Muriel mentioned him to you. He’s just a pal.”

  “Indeed? She says he’s all but proposed.”

  “She’s a meddling old buffalo!”

  “But,” he held up a hand, “it’s a very sound family. Leander married Venetia What’s-Her-Name, earl’s granddaughter. Hope of the nation, the landed gentry, especially now. Your godmother’s quite right about that. Understand Hugo’s health or something kept him out of the forces, but there’s nothing, er, to prevent his marrying and, er, having children and so forth.”

  “What?”

  The admiral saw he had floundered into deep waters. “I gather she felt it her duty to confront Leander. She asked him point-blank about the, er, state of Hugo’s, um, health. Naturally you, well, babies, children, and, er, all that sort of thing…Muriel has, er, no doubt…apparently Leander told her…and of course she assured him no problem with your ability to…ahem…sons, naturally…keep the estate in the family.”

  Frances was too aghast to speak.

  Her father had gone red in the face and was gazing out of the window. “Title and all that—important to keep it in the family. Marriage, very serious step…leads to all sorts of responsibilities. Er,” he stuttered, “children, of course, we’ve covered that, and there’s the matter of money.” The admiral felt the ship steady beneath him as he steered away from the rocks. “Your money. To be precise, your mother’s money. There will be a good deal of it. We’ve never spoken of marriage settlements, but they’re necessary, we’ll put yours in the hands of my legal advisors at once, you young people are too busy being in love to deal with the financial side of things…”

  The admiral stopped. The expression on Frances’s face did not resemble that of a girl in love. Neither did it encourage him to continue. Heaven help her husband, he thought. Then there was a knock and the door opened to the sound of typewriters clicking briskly. “Excuse me, Admiral.” The WREN was holding out a sheaf of telegrams. “Urgent, sir.” She frowned slightly at Frances as if to say, “Why are you sitting there, all dressed up, when some of us have a war to fight?”

  He turned with relief to his telegrams and the war.

  While her father busied himself with dispatches and barked orders into the telephone, Frances tapped her toe as she stared out the window at gray London skies and rubble. Damn! Damn! Damn! Why did bloody Aunt Muriel have to interfere in everyone’s lives? The way she pushed Alice Osbourne at Oliver Hammet was bad enough. But writing to Father about Hugo and discussing everyone’s…reproductive faculties? How dare she!

  Frances was irritated to think that her own behavior had led her godmother to believe Hugo was courting her. Hugo’s father, dear old boy, had always been nice to her, and he was a long-standing friend of Aunt Muriel’s, so perhaps the two old people had encouraged each other. Frances could see that a man in Hugo’s position would be under pressure to marry and produce an heir, but although she had seen a good deal of him, she had always been more interested in his glamorous friends. Hugo himself, though extremely good looking, was actually rather dull.

  But life at Glebe House was tedious in the extreme. To escape her godmother’s scrutiny, Frances had fallen in easily with the Gracecourt set, who amused themselves shooting, playing tennis and bridge, or dashing off to Brighton for cocktails, dinner, and dancing. But the gay prewar crowd, mostly consisting of minor Continental aristocrats and artistic types whom Hugo had befriended on his Grand Tour, had disappeared since the war began. Hugo was still a pal, of course, but he was busy with crops and livestock and she, not to put too fine a point on it, was one of his farmhands. There had never been any of what Elsie called “that kind of thing” between them.

  Although, now she thought about it, she ran into Hugo quite often in the course of her work—in fact, nearly every day. And he always stopped to talk to her, just being friendly, she’d imagined. Was there more to it?

  Frances didn’t think Hugo was in love with her or that he wanted to marry her, but if his father was pushing him toward her she didn’t want to encourage him. Anyway, since Colin Gubbins’s letter and her interview she had been able to think of nothing but his secret organization. It had all been most interesting. The two men and a woman who interviewed her had even asked how she thought women might best fit into the organization.

  Frances had said earnestly that in many ways they could be more useful than men, because women were chameleons; it was so easy to change how they looked by changing their clothes and hair. A girl could look anything between fifteen and fifty, pregnant, fat, thin, ugly, pretty, or sick, while men were harder to disguise. Also, in her experience, men usually assumed that women weren’t capable enough to do anything particularly important, so they were less likely to be conspicuous and get caught. And of course they could get round men without them noticing. Even Germans.

  In fact, she said disingenuously, eyes wide, she found nothing easier than getting round men, unless it was her father. The little man interviewing her had laughed at that, and said it was true and that he quite saw she would be particularly good at it, because she had nearly persuaded him. The woman reminded him for the time being women weren’t being recruited to go behind enemy lines. The little man looked serious again and said things might change…

  They’d noticed her outfit—made in Paris? Could she tell them what details marked the difference between French and English clothing? What would a French peasant woman wear? An ordinary housewife going about her business in town? Frances had given them a lengthy lecture about the finer points of French tailoring as compared to English and the ways Frenchwomen walked, wore hats, talked to their families, what they ate and even thought.

  “Observant
,” the little man said approvingly and made a note. Had she any serious medical conditions? Could she ride a bicycle? Did she think she could learn to survive on her own in the countryside?

  Of course she could ride a bicycle! She was never ill. As for the last…after a moment’s thought Frances had grinned and said she probably could. A friend of hers often went poaching when rations ran out and was good at snaring rabbits and pigeons and even pheasants. That seemed like quite a useful sort of skill.

  “Have you been poaching, Miss Falconleigh?”

  Frances leaned across his desk and looked at him levelly. “Not yet, but I can learn. If I poach a brace of pheasants for you will you take me?”

  The little man roared with laughter. “You are determined! If we can’t get the admiral’s consent for the SOE or the Auxiliary Unit, well, we can find you something to do.”

  Frances nodded. “It’s a bargain,” she said and held out her hand.

  He shook it. “Bargain sealed,” he said, “provided I get those pheasants.”

  Frances had told him she would be twenty-one in November, when she would no longer need her father’s permission. Perhaps by then they would be letting women agents join the men behind enemy lines. Now that would be thrilling.

  The admiral was still busy. Frances glanced at her watch. She thought how useful it was to have a friend like Evangeline who could do all sorts of surprising things. If anyone could survive in the countryside it was Evangeline. At first Evangeline, with her slow voice and languid ways, had seemed odd, but then, Frances had never known an American, and the fact that Aunt Muriel disapproved of her so vigorously had driven Frances to make friends with her. Sometimes Evangeline borrowed one of the Home Guard’s old hunting rifles, which Leander had donated, and went hunting in Richard’s waxed jacket. She brought home pigeons—she called them doves—and even pheasants for the whole village. When Frances had explained about poaching, Evangeline had shrugged, clearly unconcerned. Game wasn’t rationed, and everyone in the village was hungry for meat.

  Frances had been flabbergasted to find that her friend could do more than hunt; she was frightfully clever at making a lovely meal out of what she shot or trapped. She knew how to grill pigeons or rabbit on a spit over a handful of damp apple wood chips. Also, she grew vegetables and kept chickens, and since eggs from your own hens weren’t rationed, there was mayonnaise for the artichokes and tomatoes she produced. She baked apples and pears in honey…Evangeline said where she had grown up all the men went hunting and brought game home and girls learned to cook before they got married, so they could make sure their own cooks did it properly. Frances’s stomach rumbled. There hadn’t been time for breakfast before the train, and the biscuit tin had been empty for ages. Father had promised to give her lunch and she hoped he would remember.

  The admiral finished with the telegrams, and the WREN took them away. Frances was fidgeting again. He’d give her lunch, then put her on the train. Before the war they would have gone to the Savoy or possibly the Ritz. A glass of sherry. Oysters. Roast chicken. Trifle. Burgundy. Now, thanks to rationing, the food was dreadful everywhere so they might as well nip into one of the new British restaurants. He knew it would be brown soup, bubble and squeak, then some sort of sweet in a puddle of custard that tasted of dried egg, but they would be in and out in a jiffy and he could get back to the war. Girls! The sooner they got married and stopped wasting their fathers’ time the better.

  13.

  Crowmarsh Priors,

  March 1941

  Johnny’s fretting usually woke Tanni at an early hour, but this morning it was a pair of jays squawking in the pear tree outside her window. She got up sleepily and put on the dressing gown she had made from some old towels Evangeline had discarded for rags. They had been frayed at the edges but a pretty faded blue, and using her coat to trace a pattern on newspaper, Tanni had fashioned a soft, serviceable garment, with deep turned-back cuffs, pockets, and a sash. She had only white thread, but her stitches, tiny and neat as Frau Zayman had taught her, hardly showed.

  It’s lovely!” exclaimed Evangeline. “I’ve never had the patience to sew anything. At school the nuns used to rip out my stitches and make me do it over and over.”

  Flushed with pride, Tanni offered to make her one too, pleased to have a way to thank her for taking them in. A few days later, Evangeline was wearing a becoming pink dressing gown made from an old bedspread. She was so thrilled with it that Tanni asked her if she could rummage through the boxes of old clothes and bedding in the Fairfaxes’ attic for more things to alter. “Help yourself. They’re not doing anybody any good up there,” said Evangeline.

  The government was urging everyone not to waste material, and everything related to clothing was in short supply—from needles to buttons, patterns, and zips. There was a rumor clothes would soon be rationed, as well as food. Using whatever odd pieces of material she could find, Tanni made underwear for herself and clothes for Johnny, who was outgrowing everything fast. Word spread round Crowmarsh Priors and the surrounding farms that Tanni could do wonders with old clothes, and before long she was never without the old gardener’s basket filled with sewing commissions and a little notebook for recording people’s measurements. Albert Hawthorne brought her the newspapers when he and Nell had finished reading them, so she could make patterns. Women brought worn frocks for restyling, letting out, or freshening up with a new collar and cuffs, their men’s trousers for new pockets or patching where the seat had worn through, their children’s things to be lengthened and let out. Tanni even made two christening robes, finished with beautiful smocking. The women paid what they could afford, or with jam, pies, fruit, and vegetables. In the autumn Constable Barrows’s pregnant wife had paid for three maternity smocks and some baby clothes with a precious pair of laying hens donated by her mother: Evangeline’s flock increased to four.

  Evangeline was grateful for the food that Tanni contributed to the household in this way. Only a few years ago Aunt Celeste’s instructions in household management had bored her to tears. Now she struggled to recall everything she had been taught—after all, until Laurent came up with a plan, she was stuck in the village, and they had to eat. Maude, Tommy, and Kipper were always starving, and resourceful though Evangeline became at stretching the rations, feeding four children and two adults—four if Frances and Elsie were with them—was a daily struggle. Besides, her garden and the hunting expeditions took her mind off Laurent.

  Tanni saw how hard Evangeline worked in the garden and at foraging to put food on the table, Elsie and Frances on the farm, and Alice with the clothing drives for refugees, knitting for the troops, and first aid classes as well as teaching at the school, and was glad she could be useful too. Color came back into her cheeks and she faced each day confidently, reminding herself that she was a wife and mother, a grown woman with work to do, no longer a frightened schoolgirl.

  Now she poked up the embers in the fireplace and put on a log, changed Johnny, and glanced out her window into the long, narrow garden behind the house. Just before Jimmy, the butcher’s boy, had joined up the previous autumn, he had helped Evangeline dig up the flowers and shrubs to plant neat rows of winter cabbages, brussels sprouts, and leeks. They had missed some bulbs, though, and between the vegetables crocuses and daffodils blossomed now, bright as stars. She had not noticed them until today. She pointed them out to Johnny, then took him into her bed, pulled the covers over them both, and sang into Johnny’s soft hair. Johnny played peek-a-boo, squirmed, and chuckled.

  She was so happy! Yesterday she had had a surprise telegram from Bruno. He had an unexpected few days’ leave for Passover and was coming today to take her and Johnny to London for a Seder with the Cohens in Bethnal Green. She had seen Bruno only twice since she left London. Both times she had gone by train with Johnny to Cambridge, but had had only a few hours with Bruno before he was called away unexpectedly. She had come home feeling lonelier than ever. Please, she thought, don’t let Bruno’s leave be cance
lled this time. Although he telephoned whenever he could, she had not seen him for so long.

  She was also anxious to see the Cohens. They had been interned for months in a camp on the Isle of Wight but had finally been allowed to leave after a tribunal decided an elderly rabbi and his wife were not dangerous enemy aliens or German spies. The Cohens were relieved to be home but badly shaken by the experience. Tante Berthe couldn’t understand how the authorities would believe that Jews were Nazi agents. They had been cheered when Tanni wrote to tell them that people were very kind in Sussex and everyone loved Johnny.

  Evangeline had taken to the little boy straight away, and Alice had been friendly in her bossy way, calling to see if Tanni needed anything, bringing pamphlets about orange juice and cod-liver oil and an English grammar book. Tanni noticed, though, that Alice disliked Evangeline and barely spoke to her. In the weeks after her arrival Tanni had worn herself out in trying not to upset anyone, and the sadness that had descended after Johnny’s birth often gripped her. The English books and pamphlets gathered dust on her bedside table and it was all she could do to give Johnny his orange juice. Sister Tucker looked in as often as her busy schedule allowed, to reassure her that new mothers often felt like that, but Tanni was convinced that the dark feelings must be her own fault.

  Then, little by little she had begun to adjust, so that in the last few months she had felt better, more like her old self, and Johnny was thriving. Evangeline and Alice were her friends, even if they weren’t friends with each other. She had found a way to make herself useful. She kissed the photo of her family, which was propped against the mirror. Now that Bruno was taking her to London she would be able to ask Rachel where they had gone in England. It was just a matter of time until she was with them again.