by Ruby Jackson
‘Which side, Grace?’
Grace shrugged and filled her jug. She sniffed and moved quickly away to the first house.
Jack was waiting for her as she finished.
‘Are you all right, Grace? I can easily do the round if you’re not feeling well.’
Grace was determined to pull herself together. ‘I’m fine, Jack. I just feel stupid.’ She looked in the jug, to make sure she had enough milk, and went off next door. When she came out, Jack was beside the lorry and Grace could see Lady Alice in the cab, looking at a piece of paper.
‘Let me fill that for you.’ Jack moved as if to take Grace’s jug and she pulled it back, and somehow it fell, smashing into several pieces.
‘Blast.’
Grace shouted so loudly that Lady Alice opened the door and looked out.
‘It’s only an old jug, Grace. Pick up the bits without cutting yourself and get another one. There should be several in the back.’
‘Yes, Lady Alice.’ Grace bent down, picked up the pieces and put them in a small heap beside the tailgate.
‘Brush up the tiny bits, girl; there are barefoot children in this village.’
‘Yes, Lady Alice.’ Grace found the broom and the shovel in the lorry and did as she had been told, then took a larger jug and filled it with milk.
‘Yes, Lady Alice, yes, Lady Alice,’ Grace muttered to herself. ‘Damn it, I wasn’t going to speak to her again.’ She realised immediately that she was being rather silly and felt even sillier when she heard Jack trying to stifle laughter as he filled his jug. She did her next deliveries efficiently and returned to the lorry to refill the jug, handing over the milk money given to her by one of the customers who would not be at home on the next morning. ‘One and three pence halfpenny from Miss Shield. She’s short a farthing …’
‘… but will pay next week,’ Lady Alice finished for her. ‘If I had all the farthings out of which that seemingly charming old woman has diddled my family, I would be spending the winter months in the Bahamas, Grace. The winters after the war, of course.’
The deliveries completed, Jack drove the lorry back to the estate. Lady Alice sat in the passenger seat and Grace, once again, was squeezed in behind.
‘Are you fearfully uncomfortable?’ asked Lady Alice, who did not wait for an answer but carried on: ‘It’s perfect that you’re not too tall, isn’t it? I had a dear chum at school, taller than my father, poor girl. She could never have squashed down like you.’
The words ‘I had a very tall friend at school, too’ popped onto the tip of Grace’s tongue and she felt so proud because she managed to swallow them. Lady Alice would have no interest in the Rose Petries of this world. There, of course, she wronged Lady Alice.
‘Back to ditches for you, I’m afraid, Jack,’ said Lady Alice when she had pulled up outside the front door of the main house, ‘but it’s going to be so useful to have another driver about the place. If you do Mondays and Saturdays from now on, and the occasional extra day when I have to be in two places at once, then I can manage the other mornings. Reasonable?’
‘Absolutely, m’lady.’
Lady Alice jumped down lightly from the driver’s seat and began to walk towards the door. Before she reached it, she turned. ‘No harm in teaching Grace either; just make sure she doesn’t crash.’
Grace and Jack watched Lady Alice until the door closed behind her.
‘She didn’t mean that?’
‘Of course she did,’ said Jack. ‘If it makes you feel better, think of it as another task the upper classes can inflict on you. If you can drive, she won’t have to hire a driver.’ He looked into her face. ‘What a bundle of doubts you are, pretty little Grace. She’s a decent human being. Look at the way she treats Harry and me.’
‘This morning, you said she terrifies you,’ Grace said, and was pleased that he looked uncertain. ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘you’re almost a doctor and you can drive.’
‘Yes, and she wonders why I’m not driving ambulances at the front instead of digging ditches in Bedfordshire. Come on, we’d best get this back and the churns cleaned before we start the day’s work.’
Without waiting for Grace to say anything else, Jack started the lorry and drove down the back driveway to the dairy. There, they unloaded the churns, not nearly so heavy now that they were empty, and carried them into the dairy, where Walter was waiting to help them scrub them clean.
‘Maybe you should teach Walter to drive, Jack,’ Grace teased.
As she had expected, Walter looked horrified at the thought. ‘Not me, lad, I’m a horseman. Always was, always will be.’
He told them how he had done the milk deliveries for years with a horse and cart. ‘And he gave us good manure into the bargain. Can your engine beat that, Jack, lad?’
‘Horses win hands down, Walter.’
In better spirits, Jack and Grace left the dairy. Grace’s mind was still full of his description of her: ‘pretty little Grace’. I’m not little, she thought, and Mrs Petrie always said I was pretty if too thin, but what Jack said about my ‘bundle of doubts’ – I don’t like that much. Do I doubt people? Am I not too ready to think the best of them? Yes, I am, she answered herself, and then I find I’m wrong. Honesty then demanded that she add: but not all the time.
‘Jack, why does Lady Alice wonder why you aren’t driving ambulances at the front … if I can ask you, that is?’
‘Of course, you may ask anything you want, Grace. Asking questions is a really good way to learn. It’s like this: I just cannot bring myself to believe that it’s right to take another person’s life. I know that I could not possibly shoot another human being.’
‘Not even if he was a German.’
‘Not even. Grace, I think we would find that lots of the German people don’t want to be at war, don’t want to shoot at us, bomb our towns. There must be objectors among them, too. Maybe their government says, “Right, you don’t want to kill people, but we have to have someone driving ambulances.”’
Grace was not sure that she completely understood, but she nodded as if she did. ‘And should our government have asked you if you’d like to drive an ambulance?’
‘They could have told me and I would have been perfectly happy. I don’t want to die and so, yes, you can say I’d be frightened but I’d do my duty.’
Grace was surprised to see Jack blush as wildly as she had ever done. A strange feeling stole over her. Not even her adored Sam had ever made her feel quite like this. What on earth’s happening to me?
Jack was talking and she had missed his first words.
‘… if you are honestly interested. I can explain my feelings and my actions. It’s quite simple. You see, it’s all in the Bible. God said, “Thou shalt not kill.” So, therefore, it is morally wrong to go to war. There has to be a better way to deal with difficulties. And besides, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a doctor. Don’t know why. Doctors maintain life; they save life. How could anyone expect me to do otherwise? It just doesn’t make sense. Warfare is morally indefensible.’
Grace was painfully aware that she had had very little education or experiences that could be compared to Jack’s. Obviously, he knew more and bigger words than she did and could quote poets and politicians. But the argument that God had said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ worried her. If God had said that, did he mean that it was never right to kill or did he mean that it was wrong to go out and murder someone? She remembered reading a newspaper article about her friend Daisy, who had seen a German pilot deliberately strafe a woman and child on Dartford Heath. Could that be called an act of warfare or should it be called murder? Oh, she could not bear to go on with this train of thought, especially since she had seen the newspaper long after the ghastly event and even then had not written to Daisy.
Jack was looking at her rather strangely. ‘Grace, does it make it easier for you if I say truthfully that I would be perfectly happy to go into any area of warfare, helping qualified doctors as
much as I can with my fairly limited training? But to put on a silly little uniform and allow myself to be encouraged to shoot at my fellow man – I simply can’t do that.’
Grace felt unbearably sad. He believed so much in what he was saying that he was prepared to tolerate being bullied, even cruelly treated. ‘Jack, how do you know – as an actual fact – that God spoke to some human being and used those exact words?’
His look was both fond and pitying. ‘Poor dear Grace. Of course, it’s a fact. It’s in the Bible and the Holy Bible is the word of God.’
She could not let that pass: ‘Who says? God didn’t sit down himself and write it, did he?’
‘No.’ The tone in which that one small word was uttered told him how annoyed, with her and the debate, he was. For her, somehow, these great moral questions were simple, but Grace had never been a regular churchgoer. Far from encouraging her to go, Megan had actively discouraged, even forbidden her attendance. It was only when Grace had left school and started working in a factory office that she had managed to attend the Christmas Eve service with her friends. It had always been a joyful occasion, but part of her wondered, sadly, if it was the music, the lights, the candles, even the vestments worn by the clergymen, that appealed to something in her, rather than the doctrine itself.
Basically, Grace was practical. A teacher saying, ‘But the story of history is told by those who won the battles, not the defeated,’ had resonated with her. Perhaps the victors did not tell the whole truth, and perhaps the man or men, no matter how holy or how wise, who did transcribe God’s words, did not do it word for word.
‘Gosh, poor Walter is scrubbing the churns by himself. We’d better run,’ she said.
FIVE
Late May 1940
Grace had never experienced anything as miraculous as spring on a farm. The beauty that met her eyes in the following weeks amazed her. Tiny curled leaves that opened overnight to show their different shades of green, fat flower buds that unfurled to reveal beauty that almost made her weep. Massed primroses made way for daffodils, hyacinths and delightful wild flowers that she had never seen before. Blossom appeared on trees and in the hedges that separated the fields.
‘See them hedges?’ Hazel told her. ‘Every species of plant you’ve got in there shows you a hundred years in the life of the hedge. Look, know what this is?’ he asked, pointing to a slim branch.
‘No.’
‘Hazelnut, and that’s …? He pointed.
‘Holly,’ answered the delighted Grace. ‘And what’s the prickly one with the blossom, Hazel?’
‘May, Grace. Hawthorn,’ he added since she had looked so surprised. ‘And don’t ask me why it’s called May. Esau’ll know, probably; his wife knew a lot about flowers, but all I know is we called it May blossom.’
‘I think it’s because it comes out in May,’ Jack told her as they drove back from their next milk delivery. By the way, Lady Alice told me there’s a dance in the next village on Saturday night. She says we can use the milk lorry if anyone wants to go.’
The air became heavy with expectancy.
‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Does anyone want to go?’
Is he asking me to go? Grace wondered, and what should she say if he was? They were, by far, the two youngest people on the estate, although Lady Alice was scarcely ten years older. For a moment, Grace found herself wondering about her employer. She was very pretty. Still not too old and the only child of an earl: why was her ladyship still unmarried? Perhaps she had loved and lost, like Grace herself with Sam? Grace took control of her mind. You’re beginning to act out stories like Sally, she berated herself.
‘Where does Lady Alice eat, Jack?’ Much more down-to-earth than, ‘Does Lady Alice have a gorgeous boyfriend?’
Once or twice a week, Lady Alice joined the estate workers when they were gathered in the kitchen for a reviving cup of tea, but she did not join them for meals.
‘What’s that got to do with whether or not you want to go to the dance?’
‘Of course I’d like to go to a dance but that means you’d have to drive.’
‘Of course I’ll drive, if you’d like to attend. For heaven’s sake, woman, how many dates have you been on?’
Grace thought first of the mean little house in Dartford and then of her friends. ‘We all went out together, I suppose, to the church hall and the pictures. My friend Sally’s dad used to sneak us in sometimes.’
‘It’s possible that, by the time of the next dance, if there is one, you will be able to drive, Grace, or, if it’s in the summer, we might be able to get our hands on some bikes, but in the meantime, Miss Paterson, would you do me the honour of accompanying me, and anyone else who wants to come along, to the farm workers’ dance at the village hall?’
Grace longed to accept. The first time a man in whom she was … at all interested had asked her for a real date and she hesitated. How she longed to say, ‘That’d be nice.’ She smiled. It was definitely a real date, but what would he say if she told him, and she had to tell him for how embarrassing it would be when he found out in the middle of the village hall?
‘Has anyone ever told you that you have the most beautiful eyes?’
Beautiful eyes? No, no one had told her but she knew that her eyes were – quite nice. ‘Lady Alice?’ she repeated, since she had no idea how to reply. ‘We never see her eating?’
‘You are supposed to say, “No, Jack, you’re the first person,” or, “Every sensible man in Kent, Jack.” My dear Miss Paterson, you have to learn how to take a compliment. But, never mind, we have years for you to learn. Of course Lady Alice eats. Did you think the aristocracy didn’t? There’s another kitchen in the main wing of the house. That’s where I was the day Lady Alice asked me if I could drive. The housekeeper gave me some coffee while I was waiting.’
Grace was fascinated. She had wondered often about the condition of the beautiful house. There was a housekeeper. She had no real idea of just what a housekeeper did besides looking after the house, a bit like a housewife, she supposed. ‘I thought Mrs Love was the housekeeper.’
‘She looks after this wing. I think there are three servants in the main house: a housekeeper, and two housemaids. Most of the house has been mothballed for the duration.’
Grace’s overactive imagination suddenly produced a picture of the lovely old building completely covered in round white balls and she stifled a laugh. The memory of his words ‘My dear Miss Paterson’ did not make her want to laugh. She wanted somehow to hug the words to herself.
‘Are you in the ditches today, Jack?’
‘Trimming hedges.’ He sighed. ‘I do admire men like Hazel and Maurice; they know everything there is to know about farming. I can manage the work that only asks for brute force, even though it’s a strain, but the finer points … Sometimes I feel so unutterably stupid. They never lose patience when they’re with me but I bet they laugh their heads off in the pub.’
‘They wouldn’t laugh cruelly, Jack, and besides, you can save lives and they can’t.’
‘I was in the middle of the third year and so I would have a jolly good try, but I’m a long way from being a doctor.’
They drove on in a contented silence until they reached the back gates to the estate.
‘Up for a driving lesson, Grace?’
Grace’s stomach seemed to turn a complete somersault. A date and now a driving lesson. ‘I’d love it, Jack.’
‘I think Saturday morning will be the best time but I might be able to ask her ladyship if it’s fine if we try just after tea some evenings. Evenings are getting longer and it’s easier to learn in daylight.’
Grace looked again at her favourite view of the splendid house. ‘Jack, do you ever feel that there’s been some mistake and there isn’t a war on?’
He pulled the lorry up to the milking parlour before he answered. ‘No, I know only too well that there’s a war on. I listen to the wireless reports, and read the papers, but I think I know what you mean. Where are th
e battles, where are the German planes that were supposed to be bombing England into nothingness? Mind you, there are rumours that it’ll hot up in the summer. There is some rationing but we’re eating like kings, although Mrs Love did say things’ll change when the others arrive. And then those fabulous sausages we had that day, they’re from his lordship’s personal supplies; he’s augmenting our rations but that can’t go on for ever. And bear in mind, Grace, if this war goes on and on, as I think it will, practically everything we eat will be rationed.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ Grace remembered Lady Alice saying that, while living on this estate, she would learn more than how to poleaxe a pig. She fervently hoped that she would never be asked to poleaxe anything but she certainly was learning, not only about land management and animal husbandry but also about people. Valuable lessons.
‘Cheer up, Grace; you look sad. I’m very much looking forward to dancing with you on Saturday. Are you going to wear that pretty frock?’
She felt herself blushing and not only because he remembered the dress. ‘Yes, it’s the only one I have.’
They sat looking at each other for a few quiet moments. Then Jack opened the driver’s door. ‘We’d best get these churns washed or Hazel will be after us and, believe you me, he’s scarier than Lady Alice.’ With that, he jumped out of the lorry.
‘I can’t dance,’ she hissed after him.
He heard the hiss, stopped, turned round and laughed. ‘Of course you can. Relax, Grace, dancing is a natural animal mode of expression.’
‘An animal mode of expression. Thanks very much, Doctor.’ At least she had told him.
‘When my mother went into service, it took a regiment of servants to carry buckets of hot water upstairs for baths, Grace. People didn’t have a bath every day. Hot water straight from a tap is wonderful, isn’t it?’
