‘A surprise?’
‘I don’t like secrets and Owen is keeping too many lately. I still haven’t been told exactly why we have to change our accountant.’
‘Might he be taking things into his own hands to make sure he’s indispensable? Rumours about your selling must concern him a little.’
‘He’s taking advantage of my parents. They’re so unhappy about Gareth and me refusing to take on the farm and he’s playing on their vulnerability.’
‘He’s been trying to persuade Sarah they might have a future together. She treats it as a joke but he’s told her he’s moving away.’
‘What’s going on? What’s he up to? Is there something I don’t know? He didn’t tell me how badly they’d been hurt in the accident, now he’s shuffling them off on holidays without a word. Is there something else I’m not being told?’
‘I don’t think your parents are ill, if that’s what you’re thinking, just, as you say, unhappy. Perhaps Owen’s aware of how hard they work and wants to give them a few days holiday before it gets colder. They enjoyed the last visit so much.’
‘I’m their son, so why wasn’t I in on the surprise?’
She shrugged. ‘Do you want me to stay until Owen comes back?’
‘I should stay, have it out with him, remind him of his position here and the need to keep me informed. But if I miss another day I’ll be working all weekend and every evening to catch up.’
‘Then go. I’ll wait here, and as soon as Owen gets back I’ll tell him to phone you, however late.’
‘I don’t want to leave you. Besides, I want to get to the bottom of it.’
‘Shouldn’t we shut up the chickens and check the barn doors?’
‘I’ll do that,’ he said, reaching for a torch. ‘Will you build up the fire? You might be in for a long wait.’
As he put on his coat and waited for a taxi to arrive to take him to the station he looked at her, and she stood and walked over to him. His arms came round her and he pressed her close. This time she didn’t resist when he kissed her, and he left her wide eyed and a little anxious, her heart pounding as though it would burst, wanting to run after the taxi, call him back.
Ryan sat on the late-night train, his mind clear, but he couldn’t look at the papers he had brought, and he thought only of Sophie. He hoped she hadn’t been frightened away by his kiss. A kiss he had longed for ever since they had met. He wanted to look after her, not just now but always.
Owen came in at eleven and was surprised to see Sophie sitting beside the fire dozing in the cosy warmth.
‘Sophie? What are you doing here?’
‘Hello, Owen. Will you phone Ryan? He should be back by now. He said it didn’t matter how late.’
‘At this time of night? No, I won’t!’
‘It’s important.’
He went into the hall and she heard his voice, low, but clearly angry, followed by the sound of the phone being returned to its rest. He came back into the room and said, sharply, ‘Come on, I have to get you home. I have an early start, remember.’
It sounded like a reprimand, but she said nothing, just collected her bag and coat and followed him to the van. He hardly said a word on the short journey and when she stepped out at the gate of Badgers Brook he drove off without even saying goodnight, hardly giving her time to get out so he had to lean over to close the passenger door as he was moving off. He was angry and she wondered what had been said.
*
The following morning, Owen rose earlier than usual, and before Harry Sutton arrived most of the routine chores had been done. ‘I have to go into town,’ he announced as Harry reached for the overall he habitually wore. ‘If I’m not back at dinner time, go in and make yourself a cup of tea.’
‘Anything special you want me to do?’
‘You know what needs doing, don’t you?’ Owen snapped.
The solicitor was with a client and Owen drummed a tattoo with nervous fingers on the table as he waited to be seen. The solicitor was new and enthusiastic and he listened carefully to Owen’s instructions. When he left the smart new office, which still smelled of paint and varnish, Owen was smiling, all tension gone. The papers he held in his hand promised him a safe future. Ryan and Gareth could go and stuff themselves.
To his annoyance he saw Sophie and the dratted Bertie in the field and called to them, waving an arm impatiently.
‘I want you to keep out of these fields,’ he shouted as they drew near. ‘This isn’t a public highway!’
‘We were gathering mushrooms to make some soup,’ Sophie protested. ‘No one will object to that, surely?’
‘I object! Now get off this land.’
‘I hate you!’ Bertie shouted as they went into the wood.
‘Hush, Bertie, he’s only a bad-tempered man.’
‘He keeps coming to talk to Mam, and he isn’t bad-tempered then,’ the boy grumbled.
Jekyll and Hyde, Sophie thought. Smiles for Sarah and a scowl for everyone else. If he was really interested in winning Sarah back, upsetting Bertie wasn’t a good idea.
The surveyors came later that day and again on the following morning. If Harry was curious he didn’t ask, he just got on with the work while the small group wandered across the fields and disappeared into the various outbuilding, but he watched them and wondered why Daphne hadn’t come, and why it was being done while Tommy and Rachel were out of the way.
He didn’t go into the farmhouse at midday to eat his lunch. Instead he drove down to the Ship and Compass on the tractor, where Daphne was behind the bar.
‘So this is what you’re doing. Skiving, eh?’
‘Yes, and enjoying it,’ Daphne said, pulling his pint. ‘Owen said he could manage without me today, so I’m helping Betty. Nice to be popular, Harry.’
‘Something to do with them surveyors no doubt.’
‘Oh?’ she looked thoughtful then added, ‘Tommy did say something about getting a new barn, it’s probably that. Pity they had to come when Tommy and Rachel aren’t there.’
‘They’re doing a lot of measuring for one Dutch barn,’ he muttered, before taking a first loud sip.
*
When Harry went for a drink on the way home that evening, he was surprised to see Daphne there, and on her own. ‘Taken over, have you?’ he asked, putting down a shilling. ‘Blimey, girl, wherever I go you turn up. I’ll have you know I’m spoken for,’ he teased.
‘Betty went to see her brother but she’d delayed so I opened up. She’s sure to be back soon.’
He moved closer and asked, ‘Do you know anything about the Treweathers selling up? The survey covered most of the land and all of the buildings.’
‘Not a thing, I’d never been on a farm until I came here.’
Daphne was kept busy that night, but Harry helped, collecting and washing glasses and bringing up bottles from the cellar.
‘I used to help Ed now and then, when Betty was out,’ he explained. At closing time Betty still hadn’t returned. She came in as Daphne was washing the last of the glasses.
‘Sorry I am, I couldn’t even let you know.’
‘Is your brother all right?’
‘Not really. Look, I’ll make a cup of tea and I’ll tell you what’s been going on.’
‘There’s no need,’ Daphne protested, but she found it difficult to hide her curiosity and hurriedly dealt with the till and locked the money away while Betty took off her coat and made a tray of tea.
‘Today I made Elsie tell Ed the truth, and he’s shocked beyond belief. The poor man is reeling. He had no idea. She’s been running the guest-house, employing extra help and covering up her gradually worsening condition.’
‘What will he do?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve revealed the problem but I can’t offer a solution. I tried not to interfere but in the end I decided that my loyalties were with my brother, not Elsie, and I made her tell him. Now I don’t know whether I’m feeling guilty or relieved. Both I think. Look, I kn
ow it’s an imposition, but could you manage here for a few evenings, while we discuss what’s to be done?’
‘Of course. Once Rachel and Tommy are back they won’t need me any more, so I’d love to help.’
‘Thank you. You, Daphne Boyd, are amazing.’
*
The next time Owen was waiting for Sarah outside the shop she marched up and demanded to know why he had sent her son off his land. ‘He wasn’t doing any harm. Even a nine-year-old can’t do much damage to grass!’ she shouted.
‘I know and I’m sorry. It wasn’t Bertie, it’s Sophie I’m trying to discourage.’
‘Why? What can she do to grass? Anyway, Harry Sutton told us your aunt and uncle have no objections to us being there.’
‘Harry Sutton should mind his own business.’
‘So should you, Owen Treweather. So should you!’ She pushed against the side of the van as though trying to push it over. ‘And get this filthy old van out of my way, it lowers the tone of the street!’ She was hiding her laughter as she hurried away.
*
Two days later, Rachel and Tommy returned to find Harry Sutton had been sacked and Owen had employed two part-timers. He made up some story about Harry’s poor time-keeping, telling them he had done most of the chores before he arrived, without explaining that he had risen two hours earlier to make sure it happened. ‘He also went to the pub at dinner and was twenty minutes late, explaining that he’d been helping Daphne while Betty was out. We pay his wages, not Betty.’ It sounded reasonable.
The real reason he didn’t want Harry around was in case he said too much about the surveyors’ visit. The mortgage he had arranged was not intended to be used for a Dutch barn or resurfacing the approach road. Owen had a far better plan for the money, which had been transferred into a new account with himself as one of the signatures required for withdrawals and payments. He wouldn’t have difficulties faking a signature for Rachel or Tommy.
He’d been treated as nothing more than a labourer and now he was going to take what he was owed.
Daphne protested about the sacking of Harry. ‘He did much more than he needed while he was there and the twenty minutes was once only on the day the surveyors were there and that was my fault anyway.’
To her utter surprise he told her she was sacked and needn’t come again, and her wages would be sent to her.
Shocked and puzzled, she told Sophie.
*
Ed and Elsie sat and stared at Betty: neither of them knew what to say. Betty had arrived that morning, was closely followed by the doctor and Brenda Morris, the nurse. The prognosis of Elsie’s illness was discussed but Elsie herself said nothing.
‘Deterioration is never constant. Sometimes there is little change for a while, then it begins to move again,’ the doctor explained. Glassy eyed, Elsie still remained silent.
When the doctor had left and Elsie had gone to her room to rest, Betty asked her brother whether he thought he and Elsie still had a future together.
‘I married her for better or worse and I’ll stick with that. But I won’t live with her. That would be too much of a farce.’
‘You can’t come back to the Ship, Eddie, you can’t leave her alone.’
‘I don’t intend to do either. I’ll run this place – I’ve been doing it for these weeks and I know the routine – and Elsie will go into a nursing home. The money this place makes and what she’s got saved will pay for it.’ That was his decision, he said, and it was final.
*
After walking around for a while, calling to see Stella and scrounging a cup of tea, Betty went back to the pub and asked Daphne if she’d like a permanent job there.
‘I’d hoped that once Elsie and Ed had settled down, Ed would have come back to helping me. After all, Elsie ran her place alone for years and he wouldn’t have been needed, but now the chance of that is well and truly gone.’
They talked about the tragedy Elsie faced and both admitted a sneaking sympathy for the dishonest way she had dealt with it. ‘No one wants to be alone, and having an illness must make it even harder to face loneliness,’ Betty said.
‘Yet because of her you’re losing the partnership of your brother after so many years.’
‘I’ll cope. Especially with you helping me.’
Daphne happily accepted the job then went to find Sophie to tell her the good news.
Nine
Ryan, unaware of the changes threatening his parents’ farm, was in London. He had begged a lift from one of the lecturers and had found a cheap bed and breakfast for one night. He had a letter from Daphne in his wallet bearing Sophie’s previous address and he went, without much hope, to the area where she had once lived.
Since the war had ended, many of the streets had been rebuilt, but the new walls and the clean lines of fences failed to conceal scars from that terrible time. In many of the streets there were gaps when houses had once stood, and in one the middle of what had once been a long terrace of beautifully built houses was now a park.
He found the street without difficulty and saw, on the corner, a small grocery shop. A perfect place to begin his enquiries; everyone who used it would have a ration book and therefore would be a regular customer and well known to the proprietor. He tried the rather dusty door but to his disappointment it was closed. A Friday afternoon and it was closed? He looked around for a notice, hoping for a ‘Back in five minutes’ message, but there was nothing. He peered through the window and realized there was little likelihood of anyone returning within five minute or five weeks. It had clearly been closed for some time. Thinking of Stella Jones, and the gossip filter that was her post office, he asked a passer-by for directions to the nearest one.
The post office was a new building and the owners were also new. Another setback. He sighed to himself as he went to a café to decide what he should do next. He knew Sophie had lost her immediate family, but most people had other relatives: cousins, uncles, aunts, and friends and neighbours. There must be someone who knew her and could persuade her to talk, but where could he look?
He went back to the small grocery shop and tried three doors before he had a response. The door was slowly opened and the face of a very elderly lady peered short-sightedly at him. She was tiny, well under five feet tall. He felt tempted to sit back on his heels as when talking to a child. White hair waved around her face in an absentminded way, bright blue eyes stared at him, the mouth was screwed up like a rosebud. In reply to his question about the Daniels family, she said she couldn’t tell him anything. ‘The woman who ran the shop would know. I think they was related.’
‘Wonderful! Where will I find her?’
‘Gone she is, a long time ago.’
‘You don’t know where she went?’
‘No, but you could try Mrs Harris in thirty-five,’ she suggested, and he went there to be told Mrs Harris had died a month previously.
‘So much for close neighbourhoods,’ he said sadly to the new tenant. ‘I’m looking for the family called Daniels who lived here until they were bombed in 1945.’
‘I remember them, and what happened that night,’ the woman said. ‘Terrible. The whole family gone like that. I lost a brother the same night.’
‘Then you’d know if there are any other members of the Daniels family left?’ he asked hopefully. ‘I’d very much like to find them.’
‘There’s her as used to keep the corner shop. She was related, of course, but she’s moved into one of the new flats and I don’t know her address.’
‘Was her name Daniels?’
‘No, she was on the mother’s side. Now what was her name…?’ She frowned deeply but there was no sign of her dredging up the name from the depths of her memory. ‘I’m a bit forgetful these days, but it’ll come, give me a day or so, it always comes in the end.’
‘I only have today and tomorrow morning, then I have to get back,’ he said, staring at her, willing her to remember. ‘Would you mind if I called in the morning to see if the name
has come back to you? Or I could give you my address so you could write to me? It’s very important.’ He took out a creased envelope and began to write.
‘No, I ain’t fond of writing. You come in the morning, young man, I might have got it by then.’
With that he had to be content. He knew how elusive memories could be. Even his mother, whom he considered to have a remarkable grasp of everything, could sometimes struggle to bring a half-remembered name to mind.
Before he left the following morning he called on the lady, whose name he learned was Brewster, but she still couldn’t help. ‘I promise to make a note of it if I do remember, in case you come back. I can jot down the name for you, even if I can’t write letters,’ she said.
He sat in a café to fill the remaining time, and as he was walking disconsolately back to the underground station, a face he remembered well stopped in front of him. The tiny old lady grabbed his coat and tugged. ‘You that bloke who called asking about the corner shop?’ Without waiting for a reply she pointed to a woman hurrying towards the bus stop, where the conductor was waving on the last of the queue of passengers. ‘That’s her! What used to run the shop. Hurry up or you’ll miss her.’
Unable to believe such luck, he hesitated for a moment then thanked his elderly informant and ran. The bus was moving off and he called and waved, but the conductor called back that the bus was full and there’d be another one along in a minute.
‘Told you to hurry, didn’t I?’ the old lady said, disgust pursing her lips even more tightly. He asked more questions, but there were no answers and she became irritated by his insistence and her own failure. If she had once known the name it was hidden deep among layers of other memories. Mrs Brewster was his only hope. He bought a note pad, envelopes and some stamps. He wrote his name and address on an envelope, stamped it and returned to Mrs Brewster.
‘You don’t need to write a letter, he explained. ‘Just write the name and pop it into the envelope. Please? A young lady is very unhappy and you could help her if you remember the name of the lady in the shop. Will you try?’
A New Beginning Page 19
