by Lizzie Lane
‘I don’t know anything about you. You could already be married for all I know.’
His smile widened and he laughed. ‘Remind me to tell you my life story some time. It includes the fact that I am very much a bachelor, though I quite like the thought of being married. Somebody warm lying beside me.’ His honesty made her feel as though she were blushing from head to toe.
‘I may wait around to take you home, though only if you want me to.’
She nodded before alighting. ‘If you like.’
The queue for tea and sugar was long, just as she’d expected it to be. A hubbub of noise was going on around her, and yet she barely heard it. In her mind she was hearing Declan’s voice and seeing those deep sea-green eyes. She couldn’t believe he was merely a father figure to her. Although she could barely remember her father, she couldn’t believe this feeling was the same as she’d felt for him. What she felt for Declan made her blush without warning. Dreaming of him in the middle of the night, she’d wake up tingling all over. He moved something in her, something that had never been moved before. So would he ever become something more to her? Her lover even?
With a pang of resolve, she promised herself that he would be. Wishing wasn’t enough. Praying might be, though not in St Anne’s or any of the other churches in and surrounding the village of Oldland Common.
Her thoughts were taken back to the magical time she’d spent in the Forest of Dean. The friends she’d made used to write prayers and place them into the trunks or between the roots of oak trees. She’d asked them why they did it. They’d told her the prayers were to the gods and goddesses of the woods.
‘The old gods,’ said Merlyn, one of the girls she’d befriended there.
The turmoil she felt inside made her feel both exuberant and sick, completely different to how she felt about Ed.
Ed! He’d be very hurt indeed if he knew that she fell asleep at night dreaming of Declan and not of him. But there was no comparison between the two of them; one was a grown man who made her feel more special than she’d ever felt in her life. Ed was just a boy, and anyway they were finished.
The conversation the previous evening had centred round Charlie being in hospital. Presuming Frances’s silence was due to her worrying about Charlie, nobody asked her awkward questions or intruded into her thoughts.
Bettina Hicks came round to give comfort and talk about life in general. She helped herself to a slice of carrot cake freshly made that morning. ‘With sugar in short supply, isn’t it a good job carrots are so sweet?’ she said after swallowing her first bite. ‘Moist too.’
Frances managed to agree, although she thought the cake sickly, and anyway, she was wondering about Declan O’Malley; how did he really feel about her? Was he serious or just toying with her infatuation?
‘How’s that young man of yours?’ Bettina asked.
The question took Frances by surprise. ‘I don’t have a young man.’
She went back to hemming the leg of a new pair of pyjama trousers Ruby had run up from one of her father’s old pyjama jackets.
‘Don’t you? I must have been mistaken. What a shame. Never mind. No doubt it won’t be long before you find yourself another sweetheart.’
‘I don’t know that I want one. I’m quite happy by myself,’ Frances returned tersely. She couldn’t help feeling awkward beneath Bettina Hicks’s steady gaze.
‘I’m not sure I believe you. Young people should enjoy themselves as often as they can. Best grab today in case tomorrow never comes. That’s all we can do with life and more especially when there’s a war going on. All we can do is pray.’
Frances thought of the times she’d been in church singing hymns and reciting the Lord’s Prayer along with the rest of the congregation. No matter how she looked at it, she couldn’t imagine the Christian god having much patience with something as trivial as a young girl’s desire. He surely had more important things to worry about nowadays. Getting rid of Herr Hitler, the German Chancellor, had to be top priority.
Her ears pricked up when Ada Perkins was mentioned. Bettina Hicks was asking her about Miriam. ‘I understand she’s run away.’
Frances confirmed that this was so. ‘Ada doesn’t know where she’s gone,’ she added, glad of the change of subject matter.
Bettina shook her head. ‘Ada must be worried sick.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Stan. ‘She’s got a different philosophy to the rest of us. If somebody wants to go off and live their own life, then so be it. Every fledgling has to fly the nest sometime.’
Bettina turned her pale blue eyes on Frances. ‘So Ada’s keeping well?’
‘Yes. She’s fine.’
The conversation and attention turned away from her. Uncle Stan reported on his latest conversation with Mary. ‘Apparently something big is going down.’
Frances was no longer listening. Mention of Ada had opened a window in her mind.
At first she thought herself foolish to even think of doing what her friends over in the forest used to do when they wished for something in particular. By bedtime she had changed her mind.
Ruby did not come up to bed straight away, so Frances moved swiftly. Rummaging in the top drawer of the bow-fronted chest in which they kept just about everything, she found what she was looking for.
To her great relief, her old school exercise book had a plentiful supply of unused pages. She also had a very handsome fountain pen that she’d been given for Christmas, and there was a bottle of ink on the dressing table. A stool that fitted snugly underneath the dressing table was pulled out. The exercise book was opened at a blank page. The fountain pen was filled with ink from the bottle. She even had a piece of blotting paper just in case the pen dripped ink on to the polished surface.
With firm intent, she bent her head over the exercise book. Briefly she hesitated. Over in the Forest of Dean with her old friends, she’d written notes to the gods of the woods and hidden them in the hollows of old oak trees. Ada Perkins had also told her that the oak groves had been the temples of the old gods.
‘The druids were their priests,’ she’d told her. Frances had seen the other kids push notes into the hollows of trees. Sometimes their prayers were answered. They were mostly things to do with their families: a mother giving birth to her next baby without dying, a father finding a job before he drank them all into the workhouse – not that such things existed any longer.
As she thought about what to write, she looked out of the window over the back yard. Ruby had seen Miriam Powell, the granddaughter of Ada Perkins, stuffing written prayers into the gaps between the bricks of the old outhouse.
She could see the outhouse now from her bedroom window, its grimy bricks, the paint peeling from the door. It held an old-fashioned toilet, no longer used since a quarter of the back bedroom had been turned into an indoor bathroom. She wrinkled her nose at the thought of it. Perhaps the gods of the forest had been affronted by the use of an outside privy instead of a tree. It couldn’t be right to do that, especially seeing as it housed the old smelly toilet and a whole lot of insects and spiders. It had to be a tree, more specifically an oak tree, a sacred oak tree in a sacred grove.
Frances thought about it. She certainly would not be doing as Miriam had done. Her only problem was finding a sacred oak hereabouts. There were plenty of other kinds of trees and even oak trees, but not circled in a grove as they were in the Forest of Dean.
Frances turned away from the scene outside the window, the rows of vegetables, the fruit trees now in blossom and the outhouse where gardening tools were now kept and strings of onions and leeks hung from the ceiling to dry.
Bending low over the book she began to write.
Dear lady of the forest, please bless my cousin Charlie. He’s not a first cousin, only a second cousin, but I love him very dearly. Please do your best.
She signed it ‘Frances Sweet’ in a florid hand. She didn’t usually try so hard to make her letters elaborate, but this was a special occasion demandin
g she take extra care.
Once the note was blotted, she folded it into four just as she’d seen the kids in the forest do. Now all she needed was an oak tree, and the only one she could think of was in the middle of a field up behind the abattoir. It wasn’t a grove but it would have to do. She only hoped it had a nice hole in it where she could post her prayer. She would go there tomorrow.
Lying in her bed at Stratham House, Bettina tried counting sheep, but sleep eluded her. Was it her imagination or had she detected something different in Frances Sweet?
She sighed. She wasn’t sure why the girl had said she had no sweetheart when Stan had told her about the American boy she was seeing. Frances wouldn’t be the first girl to have fallen for a foreign soldier and would not be the last. What concerned her was that nobody else had noticed the change in her and nobody seemed to know about the American officer who picked her up from the bus stop. If they did, they were saying nothing. Of course, Ruby would say he was just a friend and so would Frances, for that matter. Still, it wasn’t really any of her business.
Sighing, she turned over in bed, dragging one aching joint after another. In time she might mention it to Stan, but for now she would keep her mouth shut – just in case she was very much mistaken.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Walking along West Street was not the smooth, straightforward affair Frances had expected. She chastised herself for forgetting that there would be more people around today because the bus would be running into Kingswood. There was a queue waiting outside the pub where the bus stopped and a few others on their way there.
Everyone was taking advantage of the prospect of shopping for things they couldn’t get in the village store, their ration books clutched tightly in their hands.
One person after another asked her about Charlie.
‘Is he better now? Whooping cough, was it?’
‘No. It’s diphtheria,’ said Frances.
The women who asked were only being kind, but they couldn’t help mentioning the ailments their own children had suffered from.
‘Poor little mite. My Tommy had whooping cough back in January and for a while it was touch and go, but he pulled through. A right little fighter he is, and I wouldn’t mind betting your Charlie’s a fighter too.’
Frances paused only long enough to thank them and to explain that, no, she was not catching the bus. ‘I’m just out for a walk.’
She was met with looks of disbelief. What was it about country people that they found it strange for people to just be out for a walk? Or was it purely her imagination that they thought it odd?
On glancing over her shoulder, she saw the way heads were drawn together while their eyes followed her progress. Yes. They thought her actions odd.
It might have been a clear walk from then on if she hadn’t bumped into Mrs Martin coming the other way.
‘Heard about your Charlie,’ said Mrs Martin, who for some reason had a sheep on a lead and a hen tucked beneath her arm. ‘Give your uncle Stan my best regards. T’would be a right shame if anything happened to little Charlie, bearing in mind he’s got no dad and no mother either.’
Frances was desperate to ask why Mrs Martin had a sheep on a lead and a hen tucked beneath her arm, but the explanation came without her needing to ask.
‘I’m just taking them out for an airing. Hens lay better if they have a change of scene now and again. As for Mavis here, well, she likes a nice walk too.
‘I never knew that.’
‘Well, you do now. Remember to give your uncle all the best for the little’un.’
Frances said that she would.
Two women talking either side of a hedge dividing their cottages nodded in her direction and asked after Charlie.
Frances told them he was as well as could be expected and soldiered on before they could ask her what she was up to.
Too engrossed in their previous conversation, they didn’t bother.
Although Frances appreciated that they were all only being kind, her mission was to get to the top of the lane, climb over the gate and head for the oak tree.
The last person she’d expected to see was Mrs Powell. Miriam’s mother was clothed in her usual black garb, her eyes like chips of coal in her washed-out face. Even at this distance – about fifty yards – Frances felt her legs go weak.
Frances crossed the road. She would cross back further along before heading up the lane to the field where a lone oak tree grew like a church spire in a flat desert.
To her astonishment, Mrs Powell crossed the road too. The woman wanted a confrontation! They were on a collision course!
Frances felt her heart race. A while back, at the time when baby Charlie had gone missing and been found with Miriam Powell, she’d cheeked Mrs Powell. Charlie had been found with Mrs Powell’s daughter, Miriam, in a den built and added to by generations of children down on California Farm.
It was said at the time that Miriam was ill, and there were rumours she’d given birth to a child. Nobody was quite sure who the father was, though suspicion had fallen on a young Methodist minister who had promptly disappeared from the village.
Taking a deep breath, Frances prepared herself for what was to come. From a distance, it appeared that Mrs Powell had no features except for her coal-black eyes. Only on getting closer did her nose become more discernible, pointed and sharp as a bird about to attack a worm.
She hadn’t been in Mrs Powell’s shop with its dingy lighting and dusty shelves since the night the old witch had commented on her mother and her red dress. If there was something needed from Mrs Powell’s shop, such as orange juice and cod liver oil for young Charlie, dropped off there by the district nurse, it was Ruby who fetched it.
Mrs Powell didn’t dare ban Ruby from the shop. Ruby stuck up for herself and was not the kind of woman to be intimidated. It made Frances smile to think of her standing her ground. If only she was here now.
The distance between them lessened. A few steps and they were face to face, the older woman barring her way forward.
Frances took a deep breath. ‘Whatever you want to say, get it over with. I have things to do.’
Mrs Powell’s eyes glittered. ‘I hear the little boy is sick.’
Frances felt as though there was a constriction in her throat, similar to the time she had swallowed a gobstopper almost whole and thought she was dying. ‘What’s it to you?’ She was purposely sharp.
‘If he recovers, he’ll need to eat only soft things: purées, soups and such like. Custard, of course. Rice pudding. I’m expecting some in. Bring your ration book and I’ll have some ready for you. Good day.’
Her tone, her words and the way she strutted off were all sharply brusque.
Frances stared after her, feeling a great sense of relief. She’d expected some nasty remarks referring to the fact that Charlie had been born out of wedlock, the son of her dead cousin and a lovely lady whose husband had died at the hands of the Gestapo before the war had even begun.
Taking a deep breath, she hurried on, her footsteps lighter now, unaware that Gertrude Powell had stopped and was watching her walk away. Nor did she see the wicked smile on her thin lips. The smile was not for Frances, not really. Gertrude Powell had a score to settle with Bettina Hicks.
Gertrude walked on along West Street, heading for St Anne’s at the bottom of the hill. Just as she’d expected, Stan was there, murmuring something above his wife’s grave.
On hearing footsteps, he looked up. ‘Gertrude. How are you?’
He brushed the knees of his corduroys as he got to his feet. He didn’t like the woman, but he did pity her, and anyway it cost nothing to be polite.
Gertrude nodded at Sarah’s tombstone. ‘I wonder what she would say if she knew you and Bettina spent the odd night together.’
Stan knew she was insinuating they slept together, but controlled his anger. Gertrude wasn’t quite all there. Reining in his anger, he delivered his words carefully.
‘Mrs Hicks and I are good fr
iends. We’ve known each other all our lives, just as we’ve both known you, Gertrude. So I’ll thank you to mind your Ps and Qs.’
A malevolent blackness darkened Gertrude’s eyes. ‘You ought to ask her about that nephew of hers. Ask whose son Michael really is.’
She looked confused once the last sentence was out, as though she’d lost her train of thought. She’d been getting more and more like that nowadays.
The blackness faded from her eyes, replaced by the cloudiness of puzzlement.
‘Must go. I’ve a wedding to plan.’
Stan shook his head as he watched her go. The last wedding Gertrude had planned was her own and that was years ago. Her more lucid moments were getting fewer. Gradually her mind was fading away.
Stan watched her go. Her comment about Mike Dangerfield had puzzled him. He reasoned it was just another of her wandering thoughts.
‘Frances!’
Too wrapped up with thoughts of Mrs Powell, she hadn’t seen the khaki-coloured vehicle coming along the road until it swung into the lane, stopping directly in front of her.
‘Honey! Wanna lift?’
Most military policemen patrolled in twos. Why was it Declan O’Malley was always alone when she ran into him? She guessed he planned it that way. He had authority and, despite only recently being promoted to captain, even his superiors admired his common sense and pragmatism. Something lurched inside of her. Here she was off to post a note in an oak tree, and here he was, bold as brass and large as life. What with the note and him, it had to be an omen that she was doing the right thing.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Uncle Sam’s got a running order with the farms around here. We need all the eggs we can buy.’
Dimples appeared on Frances’s face. ‘I thought the American army had tons of dried egg?’
His smile widened. ‘The colonel likes boiled eggs. As I am sure you are aware, dried eggs are no good for that.’
Frances felt her cheeks warming.
He waved a hand at the vacant seat beside him. ‘Well. Are you gonna get in?’
