by Ruby Jackson
Too much was happening and too many thoughts were chasing one another around in Grace’s head. How foolish she had been not to sit down when she was given the box and to devour every word of every letter. Why had she been so reticent? Some evenings, I was too tired, she excused herself, and then immediately argued that if she had not been, for some inexplicable reason, afraid to read the letters …
Yes, admit it, Grace. You are afraid.
‘I have found my own family. Incredible. I know my mother and my grandmother. I will never be afraid again.’
Christmas, a proper Christmas, with carols and the midnight service, holly and decorations. The Brewers and the Petries always had Christmas trees – oh, it would be wonderful.
Lady Alice had found whatever she had been looking for in her bag and was looking rather strangely at Grace. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘You are with me? Good. I’d let Eva or Katia go, but it’s a tad difficult to travel to Poland this winter. I’ll take them into the main house. They’ll have to be content with singing around my Christmas tree. You say Eva has a lovely voice. That will be pleasant.’
‘Sorry, Lady Alice, I’m very grateful and I’ll write to Mrs Brewer to see if it’s convenient.’
‘When will you understand that there’s never an inconvenient time with decent people like them. Now, for heaven’s sake, go and get some breakfast before Mrs Love has apoplexy.’
Grace’s journey from Biggleswade down to Dartford was not too inconvenient as wartime travel went. There had been a raid in the London area, which had mangled several lines, and so it took almost as long to get through the suburbs to an undamaged platform as it had taken to stutter across England. Grace was delighted to see that she had only twenty minutes to wait for a connection and her sagging Christmas spirit rose as she saw a WVS stand quite near her platform. She tried to pay for a cup of tea but the women called out, ‘Happy Christmas, love,’ as they handed her a mug of tea and a small finger roll filled with fish paste.
‘Merry Christmas, ladies,’ said Grace, and she stood enjoying the snack while watching the women dispensing not only tea and sandwiches but happy smiles and Christmas greetings. Two other land girls stopped but mostly the customers were men in uniform, men from all the services and from several different countries. It struck her that many of those on the platform were thousands of miles from home and, silently, she wished them all a safe return to their loved ones.
She was so involved watching that she had, in the end, to run for her train, but she caught it and, Christmas spirit in the ascendancy, was given a seat by a young airman. The gesture reminded her of other kindnesses and there were tears in her eyes as she thanked him and sat down.
No one was at the station to meet her but she had not expected there to be and she merely stood for a moment, basking in the knowledge that she was actually going to see all her friends at Christmas, before setting off, in complete darkness, towards the Brewers’ home. She had forgotten the reality of the blackout. Yes, there was a blackout in rural areas but houses were few and far between. The Whitefields seemed to manage blackout security on their own. The moon and the stars had illuminated England’s countryside before the war, were doing so now, and no doubt their beautiful light would still shine when the war was over. Here, in the town, all was changed: nothing, to Grace, was familiar. She was both delighted and relieved when she finally found herself at the Brewers’ house. She knocked.
The door was opened almost at once, and there stood Sally.
The girls, not usually demonstrative, hugged each other.
‘Sally Brewer, I can’t believe how gorgeous you are: like a real film star, prettier even.’
Sally, as always, took the compliment in her elegant stride. ‘Well, Grace Paterson, thank you and, if you don’t mind my saying, this has to be the ugliest hat I have ever seen.’ She snatched Grace’s WLA hat off her head and stuck it on the already overloaded hallstand. ‘And let it stay there,’ she said. ‘Come on, Mum’s in the kitchen, Rose did a shift this morning and will be here soon, absolutely dying to see you.’
‘Daisy?’
‘Not yet.’ She saw the disappointment on Grace’s face. ‘But she is coming. For at least one whole day, the four of us will be together. Oh, and I meant to ask you, what do you think about Sam?’
Grace’s heart jumped. ‘Sam? He’s all right, isn’t he?’
‘Oh, I can’t believe you don’t know. Mrs Petrie said she was going to write to you but then, she was rather overexcited in the spring; seemingly, Miss Pritchard practically ran the shop.’
‘Excited? Tell me, Sally.’
Sally looked at her, as if wondering how a director might suggest she deliver the line. ‘He escaped,’ she said simply. ‘God alone knows where he is. No one’s heard but we’re all being really positive.’
‘And he hasn’t written to his family or you?’
‘Don’t be daft, Grace, escaped British prisoners can’t just walk into a post office and say, “Please may I send this letter to my mum?” ’ She said nothing about a letter to Sally Brewer.
They heard the front doorbell. ‘We’ll get it, Mum,’ she called through to the kitchen. ‘Come on, Grace, go and open it; it’ll be Rose.’
Grace smiled and hurried to the door, and so began a very happy Christmas holiday.
That first night found Grace and Sally still awake after midnight. Loath to part with Rose, they had walked her back to the Petries’ shop and Grace had listened avidly to tales of the orphaned boy, George, whom, initially, Daisy seemed to have adopted or sponsored but who was now almost a member of the family and a firm favourite with everyone.
Since neither Grace nor Sally had to get up early next morning, they sat up in bed talking: sadly, about Daisy’s loss, and, positively, about Sam’s escape. It was obvious to Grace that Sally loved Sam very much, so determined was she that he was not dead but somehow making his way across Europe.
‘What a great film it would make, Grace.’
Earlier, Rose had confirmed that an appointment had been made with the solicitors for Monday morning, at eleven o’clock. Unlike Grace, Sally found the idea of hidden documents, missing money and beautiful gold watches extremely exciting. ‘It’s like a play, Grace, and you’re the heroine, although I’m afraid, in that ghastly nightgown, you don’t look much like a heroine. I am definitely heroine material, although perhaps, to be fair, like Rose, you would be better; although Vivien Leigh’s dark and she was stunning in Gone with the Wind.
It was obvious that Sally was prepared to talk all night, and Grace had a sinking feeling that she would still hear the Whitefields alarm clock in her head at four thirty next morning.
She did wake early, from habit rather than from long-distance alarm sounds, and lay in bed, telling herself that resting was almost as good as sleeping, and going over and over in her head the questions she hoped to ask the solicitor, Mr Crawford.
On Monday, in the solicitors’ office, she found that Mr Crawford provided her with answers before she had even asked the questions, and the answers were sometimes to questions that it would never have occurred to her to ask.
The good news – that Margaret Hardy Paterson had inherited the legacy and had safely tied up the inheritance until her daughter, Grace Hardy Paterson, came of age – was both exciting and confusing. Grace had never had a bank account. Money was needed to start an account and Grace had never, in her life, had any money. While she had worked in Dartford, Megan had taken everything, except for a few shillings per week, for Grace’s board and keep, and since Grace had joined the Women’s Land Army, any money left at the end of each week had simply stayed in her purse. Now she found herself a woman with a sizeable bank account – and a gold watch.
There was other news, too, news that Grace found difficult to understand. Mrs Petrie held her hand as Mr Crawford told her that the marriage ceremony enacted in 1919 between Margaret Hardy and John Paterson appeared, to all intents and purposes, to have been bigamous.
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��Bigamous?’ Grace could not or did not want to believe this.
‘A bigamous marriage—’ began Mr Crawford.
Grace cut in, coldly, ‘I know what bigamous means.’ She added, ‘Thank you,’ more quietly.
‘There appears to be no record of divorce proceedings between this John Paterson and his first wife, Gertrude Monroe Paterson. At least, so far, all our research has drawn a blank.’
An almost embarrassed silence fell for a moment, while Grace tried to understand the importance of everything she had heard. Realisation hit her like a lightning bolt. ‘I’m illegitimate,’ she said, so quietly that Flora Petrie hardly heard. ‘No wonder they threw me away. They didn’t want a …’ She could not say the word.
‘No one threw you away, Grace, dear. Your grandmother mentions you in her will.’
No, she doesn’t. If she knew I existed when she wrote the will, she would have mentioned my name. I must read those letters thoroughly. No more excuses, Grace, about being scared to find out. What could be worse than this?
‘One of our clerks is researching Scottish registers of deaths. If Gertrude Paterson, née Monroe, died before 1919, then there would have been no need for a divorce.’
Grace’s spirits rose. ‘Gertrude isn’t too common, is it, Mr Crawford?’
‘Quite popular, Grace. The difficulty is that we need to search in several counties. We know where they lived with their daughter, Megan, but – I don’t know if you knew this – but Mr Paterson seems to be a member of a large family of travellers.’
Travellers. The men with large suitcases, which they insisted on opening on the doorstep so that the lady of the house could see the exceptional quality of their sheets and towels. ‘Good for nothing but dusters,’ Mrs Petrie used to say. The war seemed to have put a stop to them.
‘What did he sell?’ Grace asked, as she wondered whether it was possible that she had opened the door of the Dartford house to her own father.
Mr Crawford looked at her in surprise and then he laughed. ‘Quite different type of traveller, Grace; part of the history of our delightful island. Travellers follow the crops, fruit mostly. A travelling family might spend the winter in a town, but in the summer they pick fruits, returning to the same farms year after year; they’re usually well known to the farmers and welcomed.
The picture imprinted itself on her mind again. A field; a young woman with a child, their bare feet dusty in the warm dry soil. Raspberries.
‘Was Margaret Hardy a traveller, Mr Crawford?’
‘Certainly not before 1919, Grace. Her father was a bookkeeper in a large insurance firm.’ He rifled through the papers in front of him. ‘Kent, if I remember rightly, somewhere in Kent. Canterbury, that’s it, Canterbury. How could I have forgotten that? Not a million miles from Dartford, now that I come to think of it.’
Mr Crawford ordered tea for them. ‘I think you’ll be quite pleased with this cup, Mrs Petrie,’ he said with a smile and she agreed with him.
He turned to Grace. ‘Now, Miss Paterson, I think we’ve gone as far as we can until the New Year. Do be assured that if we uncover any more details about your parents, we will let you know as soon as possible.’
‘Grace has still to go through some of the papers, Mr Crawford,’ Mrs Petrie broke in. ‘It’s been hard for her, hasn’t it, dear? But isn’t it likely that answers will be in them?’
The solicitor agreed with her, they wished one another Merry Christmas, and then Grace and Mrs Petrie left and began to walk through the town towards the Petries’ shop.
Grace started to laugh. ‘You’re amazing, Mrs Petrie. I was so impressed with how you talk so easily to a head lawyer.’
‘It’s all thanks to Miss Partridge, Grace. She told me to make sure that we do everything we can because the lawyers charge for everything they do – have to, I suppose, to pay wages and such – but your nan thought forward and so should we. You might even have as much as a thousand pounds behind you and we want it to grow, not be eaten up by legal bills.’
Grace was somewhat overwhelmed. ‘But they have to be paid, Mrs Petrie. I’d never have found out all this without them.’
Mrs Petrie adjusted the faux-fur scarf on her best coat before she spoke again. ‘ “The labourer is worthy of his hire,” Grace, but we don’t want him labouring over something we can do ourselves, do we? Especially not at Christmas?’
Someone else had quoted that bit about labourers. It was so familiar. Probably a vicar, thought Grace, as she agreed with Mrs Petrie. ‘I asked Mrs Love to put the box in the estate safe while I was down here, but I did bring a few of the letters with me, just in case there was time and … actually, I carried one or two pictures to look at. One is of my mother, Margaret, and one of my grandmother, Abigail. Isn’t that the loveliest name? Wish they’d called me Abigail instead of Grace. Anyway, I’ll show them to everyone.’
‘When you’re ready, love; and, Grace, your own name is a proper ladylike name.’
The rest of the day was spent doing the hundred and one things that families need to do at Christmas, including shopping for a dress for Grace for Christmas Day. She had never actually thought of buying new clothes; the last thing she had considered buying had been white sandals and now it was winter and the sandals had never been bought. She refused to remember why. But on a cold fresh winter day in Dartford she walked through the second-hand stalls in the market with Mrs Petrie, who hoped to find a dress that could, with a little work, be made absolutely perfect for Grace.
‘You should see the gorgeous dresses Mrs Roban made over for Daisy, Grace, love. Doubt we’ll find that quality but you never know. Oh, look, isn’t that green wool pretty, and green is lovely for Christmas.’
‘Sorry, Mrs Petrie, not green. Almost everything I wear is green.’
‘Red’s perfect for Christmas and would look good on you.’
Grace looked at the high-necked long-sleeved woollen dress. ‘Sorry,’ she said, wondering where the courage had come from that caused her to argue with someone who had always been kind to her. ‘I’d look like a ripe cherry.’
That comment made them both laugh but Mrs Petrie would not be put off. ‘Nonsense, pet, you’re a lovely young woman and red would look ever so good on you with your lovely brown hair, but, if you find solid red too much, we can always find a nice collar, maybe even cuffs. I could put them on and we wouldn’t even need to ask Mrs Roban for help.’
‘That’s extra work, Mrs Petrie. Let’s look a bit more for our Christmas shopping, and, if we find nothing, we can always go to Horrell and Goff, or Potts and Sons.’
Agreed, they wandered around the stands. Grace found a pretty box of soap, not a whiff of carbolic about it, and a pair of woollen gloves that Mrs Petrie assured her would be perfect for young George, the orphan who was now living with the Petries and helping out in the shop.
‘We’ve got him some magazines, boys’ ones: Rover, Boy’s Own and Triumph – being a lad, he’ll be happier with them than with his new winter boots. But let’s have a look over there, Grace, love.’
Grace wanted a dress, but then: ‘Wow, Mrs Petrie, look, isn’t that a genuine Fair Isle?’
Almost hidden among a line of jumpers and cardigans, Grace saw a light beige hand-knitted cardigan. She slipped it off the stand and held it up to look at it. It was the image of a cardigan she had once seen in a knitting feature in the Land Girl, the WLA magazine: buttoned up to the neck, long sleeves and, across the top of both the back and the front, the most exquisite band of the age-old and very complicated pattern.
‘Check inside, Grace. The backs of real Fair Isles are almost as complicated as the front.’
Grace turned the buttoned-up cardigan inside out and, yes, there were the telltale ends of the various colours of wool – blue, pink, yellow, green, white – all sewn in.
‘Absolutely beautiful, pet. Any flaws or darns anywhere?’
‘To be honest, I don’t think I care; it’s so beautiful. Must have taken weeks to knit.’
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nbsp; ‘And it’ll cost a fortune, maybe as much as two or three guineas. God knows what they cost new.’
I can’t possibly spend that on a second-hand cardigan, no matter how lovely it is, Grace thought, while Mr Crawford’s voice saying ‘five hundred pounds’ seemed to go round and round in her head. ‘Look at the price for me, Mrs Petrie. I think I’ve got thirty-five shillings left.’
‘You in the Forces, pet?’ asked a voice behind her, and Grace turned to see a short and very thin woman wearing a turban and with a wraparound apron covering her clothes. ‘That’d look lovely on you; all the girls is wanting them, wear ’em over frocks, with a nice blouse; speaks for itself that cardy does.’
‘You’re right; it is lovely but I probably can’t afford it.’
‘Funny thing, I just reduced it, seeing as it’s Christmas but I’d like it to go to someone wot’s doing her bit for us.’
‘Grace is a land girl,’ Mrs Petrie broke in.
‘Thought so. You do ’ave the ugliest hats, don’t you? Think it’s my duty to ’elp you out. A guinea for the next minute then it goes up again.’
‘A guinea? Do you mean it?’
‘Merry Christmas, pet.’
Hardly daring to believe her luck, Grace handed over the money, wished the stall keeper ‘Merry Christmas’ in turn and walked off with Mrs Petrie. She was stunned. ‘I can’t believe I actually own this.’
‘About time nice things happened to you, love. More than a nice frock would have cost you, though.’
‘I love it, and she’s right, they’re very fashionable. Wonder what Rose’ll say?’
‘Probably that you was robbed, over a pound for an old cardy,’ said Mrs Petrie, with a laugh to show that she was teasing.
She was wrong. Rose looked at the cardigan, examining the age-old pattern carefully. ‘It’s gorgeous, Grace, and I’ve got a skirt’ll be great with it.’ She smiled at the confused look on Grace’s face. ‘Mum, remember that mustard wool we bought, thinking I could let it down a bit? It’s been hanging in the wardrobe over a year and I’ve never done anything with it. We can turn it up for Grace and her waist isn’t that much smaller than mine – a belt will hold it up.’
