‘But Mum, we all know that it’s when the womb gets ready to catch an egg on its way down, and if it doesn’t grow into a baby, it comes out with the blood, and that’s a period,’ said Grace with deliberate casualness, knowing that her mother would be horrified. ‘And some o’ the big girls told us what makes an egg grow into a baby,’ she added slyly, with a sideways look at her mother to see how this was received.
Violet Munday’s jaw had literally dropped. ‘Who told you this? Tell me at once!’ she ordered.
‘Oh, Mum, the big girls talk about it all the time, and we all know how it’s done!’ protested Grace, rather alarmed at her mother’s reaction, for Mrs Munday had turned quite white as she continued her questioning.
‘But which of them told you, Grace, things you’re not nearly ready to know yet. Who was it told you?’
‘There was a crowd o’ them stood at the back o’ the girls’ cloakrooms, and we could hear what they were saying,’ replied Grace, beginning to wish that she had not spoken so boldly.
‘Which girl in particular did you hear it from? I insist upon knowing, and won’t let you leave this room until you tell me!’
Now Grace had no wish to get any of her fellow pupils in the first year at Everham Council School into trouble, so she hit on the idea of naming the girls in Isabel’s year, those who had left the school now and were working.
‘Well, there was, er…’ Grace thought of making up a name, but was awed by the fury in her mother’s eyes. If she said Betty Goddard or Phyllis Bird or Rosie Lansdowne, Mrs Munday would go straight to their mothers. She thought quickly. ‘Well, there was, er, let me see, there was Mary Cooper, I think, yes, I think she might’ve been one o’ them,’ she said. Nobody went to the Coopers’ home, and people only asked Mary round to visit them because they were sorry for her.
‘Mary Cooper? The girl I’ve tried to befriend and asked to tea, and made an effort to treat her the same as any girl from a respectable home? And is this the thanks I get, filthy talk that no young girl should hear? Wait till I see her parents, I’ll give them a piece of my mind!’
‘Oh, please, Mum, don’t get her into trouble!’ begged Grace, now very much regretting that she had mentioned Mary’s name. ‘She wasn’t the only one – oh, please, Mummy, I don’t think it was her, it was another girl, some girl whose name I’ve forgotten!’ She said Mummy to make herself sound younger, the little girl who had usually been able to get her own way with either parent.
But Violet Munday had heard enough, and dismissed Grace to her piano practice. Not even hearing about the goings-on of adolescent boys had shocked and upset her as much as this; she could hardly bring herself to tell Tom what she had heard from their little Grace – and when she did, he was not as angry as she thought he ought to be.
‘Stands to reason, girls talk between themselves about that sort o’ thing, Vi. Boys may mess about with themselves, but girls are more for talking. It just shows it’s best to start early, telling them the truth.’
This failed to impress Mrs Munday who made it her business to speak to mothers of girls who had been in Mary’s year, to warn them about her, even though these girls had now left school. Bert Lansdowne and his wife thought it a big fuss over nothing much, and continued to be friendly towards Mary, now in service to Mrs Yeomans at Yeomans’ farm. And Isabel surprised her parents by standing up stoutly for her old school friend.
‘It’s not her fault that her mother drinks, and anyway, look how kind Mrs Cooper was to me when I had to come home from the post office—’ She stopped speaking at the recollection of that shameful episode, and Tom Munday nodded.
‘That’s right, my girl, the day old Cox had a stroke in his kitchen, and Mrs Cooper went for Dr Stringer. That was two good deeds in one day, poor woman.’
‘Poor Eddie, that’s what I say,’ sniffed Mrs Munday, ‘and I won’t have that girl round here again.’
‘There’s no need to, now that she works for Mrs Yeomans all day,’ muttered Isabel; the friends had inevitably drifted apart now that their schooldays were over.
As for Grace, she had learnt her lesson, and kept quiet at home, though at school she continued to instruct her awestruck classmates in the mysteries of human reproduction.
On the twenty-second of June there was great excitement and rejoicing all over the country when the new King George V was crowned in Westminster Abbey with his beautiful Queen Mary at his side. Special services were held in thousands of churches, and towns and villages were bedecked in flags and bunting to celebrate the momentous event. Many years ago the Princess May, as the Queen had formerly been known, had been engaged to George’s elder brother Albert, the Duke of Clarence who had suddenly and tragically died quite young, so George, being the next in line to the throne, had inherited both the crown and the princess; but this was ancient history, and the royal pair, now in their forties and married for seventeen years, had raised a family of five sons and a daughter. Their photographs showed them as regal and upright, a picture of devotion and domestic harmony.
‘They’re a proper example of what family life should be,’ said Mrs Munday approvingly, and the rest of the country must have thought the same, judging by the crowds who stood outside the abbey while the three-hour coronation ceremony was taking place, and who cheered the king and queen as they progressed along the route in the state carriage, as handsome as their portraits.
At St Peter’s a special thanksgiving service was held at the same time as the coronation, followed by a picnic organised by the vicar’s wife Mrs Saville, held on the vicarage lawn. Lady Neville drove over from Hassett Hall with Miss Neville, a pale, thin young woman who was seldom seen in public, and gave an opening speech in which she reminded her hearers of the honour they shared as subjects of Great Britain, presiding over a worldwide empire, in which her husband Sir Arnold and their son played their role, assisting the Viceroy of India in his duties as the king’s representative.
‘Our king and queen will lead us forward into a time of even greater prosperity,’ she said, and Tom Munday silently nodded; he and Eddie Cooper had attended a meeting in Everham Town Hall where their Member of Parliament had given a public lecture on the tremendous industrial advances made in the previous century, and how the social ill effects of that upheaval were now passing, while the advantages of mass production were becoming enjoyed by all, to the advantage of nation and Empire. Lady Neville seemed to be entirely in agreement, and her speech was greeted with enthusiastic applause.
Practically all of North Camp came to the picnic, and families took their places on the grass or at trestle tables, to be waited on by Mrs Saville’s team of helpers, recruited from the Mothers’ Union. Older children sat at a separate long table, with the new curate, Mr Storey, in charge, assisted by young ladies who had willingly volunteered their services. These included Isabel, looking a picture in her summery dress and wide-brimmed straw hat, her glossy red-brown hair pinned up beneath it, with a few tendrils escaping at the nape of her neck.
‘She’s a proper little lady,’ thought Tom Munday, suddenly surprised at how much older she looked. Mr Storey, suitably attired in clerical black, gave her a briefly admiring smile as he handed her a tray of egg sandwiches to pass down the table. Isabel thought him very handsome, and wondered what it would be like to be a clergyman’s wife. Now that she had become a woman, her thoughts sometimes strayed to marriage and having babies; life in a vicarage must be ideally happy! She caught Mr Storey’s eye again over the laden table, and blushed furiously at the thought that sprung unbidden to her mind; she quickly lowered her eyes and turned away, little realising that Mark Storey had noted pretty Miss Munday from the post office. He thought how refreshingly shy and modest she was, compared to some of the young ladies who eyed him boldly and whispered to each other behind their hands, which he found most disconcerting. He wondered how long he could expect to remain curate at St Peter’s; since Canon Harrington’s death, the Rev. Mr Saville had become vicar, and had been given the n
ewly ordained Mark Storey as his assistant, a young unmarried man who occupied a room in the vicarage and joined the family for meals. It was an exciting life in the Lord’s service, as Mark saw it, and he hoped he would not be moved to another parish for at least the next two years.
‘What d’you think of Mr Storey, Isabel?’ whispered Grace, having noticed the glance that had passed between the curate and her sister.
‘Nothing at all,’ replied Isabel, frowning at Grace’s saucy manner.
‘He’s very handsome, isn’t he?’ observed Grace unabashed, but Isabel turned away to pour out cups of tea, wincing in case Mr Storey might have overheard Grace’s nonsense; what a disaster it would be!
And yet… She had noticed Phyllis Bird smiling at Ernest when he and Ted Bird set out with the Everham Cycling Club; Ernest of all people, her brother! The two lads pedalled off with the club every Saturday, but Mrs Munday would not allow her son to join them on Sundays.
‘If the Birds are willing to let their sons desert their church, that’s up to them, though I’m surprised at Mr Bird, a churchwarden,’ she declared. ‘But of course, my Ernest wouldn’t want to miss going to church with his family.’
And it seemed she was right, for Ernest continued to attend St Peter’s without protest, and he also remained a member of Mr Woodman’s Bible study group on Sunday afternoons. Paul Woodman was now at Bristol in his final year of training for the ministry, though he had changed his allegiance from the Church of England to the Methodist form of worship. His parents, taken aback at first, had soon followed suit, which meant that they now had to walk all the way to South Camp each Sunday to attend the rather nondescript building with its corrugated iron roof, where the preacher weekly exhorted his largely impoverished flock of menial workers to turn away from sin and be saved, celebrating their conversion with hearty, ecstatic hymnsinging which gave rise to some local complaints about the noise.
The evangelical tone of the Bible study group remained much the same as it had always been, and Ernest, now one of the older members, was sometimes asked by Mr Woodman to lead the younger boys in prayer. He also found himself thoroughly enjoying the Saturday explorations of the all-male cycling club, pedalling out to Guildford and the Hog’s Back, and to Hindhead and the Devil’s Punch Bowl. The sun and the wind on his face were exhilarating, as was the sheer physical exertion when they had to pedal uphill, and Ernest would overtake half of his puffing companions, some of whom had been scornful classmates at Everham Council School.
‘Are you looking forward to leaving home and going to that commercial college, Ernest?’ Isabel asked him one evening towards the end of August.
‘I think I am,’ he replied with a smile. ‘It’ll be good to know that I’m training to do the sort of work I know I could do well.’
‘You mean like being manager of some big firm?’
‘Perhaps one day,’ he said, though he privately saw himself as a chief librarian who also wrote and published poetry.
‘But you’d have to start off as a junior in some poky little office, wouldn’t you?’ Grace chimed in, having heard their parents discussing his future prospects.
‘I’ll be quite happy to work my way up!’
‘D’you think you’ll miss us lots?’ persisted Grace.
‘Yes, but I’ll be home at weekends, so Saturdays and Sundays will be the same as now,’ he answered, smiling, and Isabel wondered if he was thinking about Phyllis Bird.
‘I want to get away from North Camp just as soon as I’m old enough,’ said Grace with a pout. ‘It’s a boring place, and nothing ever happens unless you count church fêtes and picnics.’ She wrinkled her nose at the mention of these tame entertainments. ‘Everything’s always the same here from one week’s end to another.’
But in this she was mistaken. Two days later old Mr Cox died in his sleep, leaving Mrs Cooper with nobody to call on and care for every day. She enquired in vain for some useful work, looking after some other old person or housebound invalid, anything to get her out of the empty house during the day, and keep her mind off the temptation up in the loft. She even offered her services free of charge.
‘That’s where she’s making a mistake,’ said the North Camp gossips. ‘People don’t appreciate anything they don’t have to pay for, and with her reputation…’ Heads were shaken and knowing looks exchanged.
Until they were shocked into silence. For in the end Joy Cooper could not hold out against her enemy, and one afternoon she climbed the rickety ladder up into the loft, grabbing at the brandy bottle and drinking straight out of it. Within the next hour she had got on a bus to Everham which put her down at the railway station. She bought a platform ticket and waited for the express train for Southampton, due to come hurtling through before three o’clock; the brandy helped her to perform her last desperate act, and she threw herself in front of it.
At the coroner’s inquest the train driver said that he’d had to make an instant decision whether to brake the train at full speed, putting at risk the passengers in the carriages behind him, or go straight ahead and then slow to a stop, having run over the woman on the line. The coroner agreed that he had been wise to choose the latter course.
The head shaking turned to gasps of horror on hearing the dreadful news, and Mrs Munday was not the only one to shed tears; in fact more of Joy Cooper’s neighbours turned out to mourn at her funeral than had ever shown her friendship in life. Eddie Cooper and Mary stood beside the grave while Mr Saville read the Burial Service from the prayer book, and after her body had been committed to earth, Eddie turned round to shake the hands of Bert Lansdowne and Tom Munday. Mary kissed Isabel and told her not to cry, and then the bereaved husband and daughter abruptly left the churchyard, cutting short the tentative expressions of sympathy.
Violet Munday was unusually quiet and thoughtful as she walked home.
CHAPTER THREE
1912
Just what is that boy going to do with his life?
Ernest was uncomfortably aware of his father’s unspoken question, though Tom Munday had not recently broached the subject with him. The final term at the commercial college would be starting after Easter, and the question of employment at the end of it loomed large; fellow students like Ernest’s friend Jim Quayle were applying for posts and going for interviews. Mrs Munday had always believed that Ernest would be in demand with his new qualifications, confirmed by a certificate of proficiency in basic business skills, but looking ahead to the end of that last term, there were not any obvious openings in the Guildford area for newly trained clerks. When Brights department store advertised for an assistant floor manager, the post had been quickly filled, and in any case Mrs Munday hoped for something better for her son. The college superintendent frequently told students that the best opportunities were in London, but country-loving Ernest had no wish to rent a room in the sprawling capital, and besides, he wanted to keep up his membership of both the Bible study group and the cycling club, though his weekends at home had curtailed any chance of a social life in Guildford. Jim Quayle, who also lodged at Mrs Green’s, had introduced Ernest to tennis which they practised on weekday evenings, and after a while Jim had invited two enthusiastic girls from the college to join them in mixed doubles. It soon became apparent that Jim had a fancy for one of the girls, and began to court her seriously; but when no similar attraction developed between Ernest and the other girl, the foursome had broken up, amicably enough, but leaving Ernest with a puzzling sense of loss. He and Jim had shared a lot in common, or so he’d thought, but this appeared to be the parting of their ways.
For Isabel Munday life was more certain and much brighter. At fifteen she was leaving the post office to become Miss Daniells’ teaching assistant at the start of the summer term, and there she would remain for the next two years, before enrolling at a teachers’ training college. A sweet-faced girl with a genuine love of children, her parents regarded her with pride: Tom with quiet satisfaction, his wife far more volubly, irritating the pare
nts of other North Camp girls. Betty Goddard helped her father to keep the accounts at Thomas and Gibson’s, and was referred to as his secretary by her mother, and as a shopgirl by Mrs Munday. Phyllis Bird took over Isabel’s place in the post office, and Rosie Lansdowne assisted in her father’s dairy, with a view to enrolling as a nursing cadet at Everham Hospital the following year. Mary Cooper had moved into the Yeomans’ farmhouse to assist Mrs Yeomans who had surprised herself by having another baby at forty, and so needed more help in the house, especially at haymaking and harvesting, when hired labourers clumped into the stone-floored kitchen for bread, cheese and beer. And Eddie Cooper had astounded North Camp by marrying again, his new bride being Annie the barmaid at the Tradesmen’s Arms, a lady of about thirty who expertly drew pints for others but was herself teetotal. It soon became known that Mary and her stepmother did not get on, and this was borne out when the second Mrs Cooper produced a baby son, but Mary stayed on at the farm to help Mrs Yeomans with her new baby, also a boy. The older Yeomans children, two girls and a boy, were all working; the boy, now twenty, was his father’s right-hand man.
Tom Munday was getting more demands on his skill than he could reasonably deal with, so took on another apprentice school-leaver who showed more aptitude for carpentry than Ernest ever had. Tom and Eddie agreed that times were good and getting better for working men as wages rose and prices fell; Lady Neville’s confident prediction, and that of the MP, seemed to be justified, that Great Britain was surely marching forward to ever greater prosperity.
And then suddenly in mid April came news of a terrible disaster, the shock-waves from which reverberated around the world. The great new passenger liner Titanic of the White Star line, alleged to be unsinkable, struck an iceberg in mid Atlantic on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York, and had sunk with the loss of fifteen hundred lives. The news cast a shadow over every conversation, and there were those who asked why God should allow such loss of life on so great a scale. Mr Saville preached a sermon pointing out to his congregation that the liner’s wealthy passengers had been enjoying every luxury, drinking, dancing and playing cards when sudden death and destruction had come upon them, and he counselled his hearers to trust in the Lord’s justice, and give thanks for the survival of some seven hundred souls, rescued from the freezing cold sea by the liner Carpathia. It should give them all pause for thought, he warned, to review and perhaps renew their lives.
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