by Katie King
‘Peggy dear, I’m so very sorry to hear that you’ve been through the wars today,’ said Barbara sympathetically in the sort of voice that she knew her sister would take as an invitation to talk about what had caused such a ringing disagreement between husband and wife. She perched on the edge of the bed with her own cup of tea in her hand as she looked towards Peggy with her eyebrows raised in encouragement.
‘It was horrible, just horrible,’ said Peggy, as she stared without focusing at Barbara’s face before turning to look mournfully down at the tea softly swirling in her cup.
‘Another woman?’ Barbara said softly. What else could it be, she thought, to cause such a maelstrom of emotion in the normally so level-headed Peggy.
‘Another woman,’ her sister agreed morosely.
Barbara wasn’t sure what to say. She’d always found Bill to be pleasant enough company although, try as she might (and she had tried very hard over the years), she had never believed him to be quite good enough for her sister.
Once or twice Barbara had thought Bill had looked as if he’d had a roving eye, and just before he and Peggy had married all those years previously, bolstered by two port and lemons one Saturday night at the Jolly, Barbara had even been so bold as to say outright to him, ‘I do very much hope you’re going to be true to Peggy, Bill; she deserves the best, and she absolutely doesn’t need some dog of a husband who’s going to be hard to keep on the doorstep.’
Bill had replied in such an earnest voice that Barbara found herself somewhat mollified, saying that he knew he wasn’t worthy of someone such as Peggy, but if she would deign to marry him then he’d never so much as even look at another woman or do anything at all in Christendom to make her unhappy, God strike him down dead if ever he did.
Thinking about it later, Barbara hadn’t quite been placated but she had allowed the matter to lie, and over the ensuing years a lot of time had passed without any obvious shenanigans on Bill’s behalf and so gradually she had done her level best to think well of him.
Then, when Bill and Peggy hadn’t easily been able to have their own children, Barbara had started wondering about him again, fuelled at this point by Ted telling her that there had been the odd rumour heard in the Jolly about Bill and a fancy-woman flying around the docks.
Still, Peggy and Bill had seemed to weather that particular storm, helped no doubt by the announcement of Peggy’s unexpected pregnancy with Holly after ten barren years of marriage. And at the time Barbara was pleased that she had kept quiet, at Ted’s advising, over Bill’s reported peccadillo. She thought he might have well overstepped the mark once or twice although not necessarily in a really serious manner, and therefore she hadn’t want to upset Peggy with no firm evidence to back up the allegations. And once the pregnancy had been announced Peggy had seemed so full of happiness that it would have been a desperate shame to ruin her unadulterated joy, and although Barbara had scrutinised Bill carefully, he never gave so much as a hint that he wasn’t just as thoroughly delighted that he and Peggy were going to be parents.
However, this time around, Barbara thought now, the cat seemed to have been well and truly set amongst the pigeons.
‘Why don’t you get it all off your chest, Peggy? I’m sure you’ll feel better if you do,’ Barbara cajoled. She still had no idea precisely what it was that Bill had done, and she was keen to know more.
‘I feel a fool, Barbara, such a total fool. While I’ve been stuck up here, away from you and Ted, and far from home and all that I know, looking after our dear Holly and washing and feeding her, and bringing in some money working at June Blenkinsop’s, and trying to do the right thing by your two as well, and never suspecting a thing about what Bill might be up to, he’s clearly been living the life of Riley.’ Peggy’s sentences jumbled into one another, but she didn’t seem to care although Barbara wished she’d get to the point. Then Peggy sighed dramatically and took a sip of her tea, before adding with a sarcastic tinge to her words, ‘She’s called Maureen, and she was working in the NAAFI, he told me. And he’s been seeing her since November, although apparently he wanted to end it at Christmas, although somehow he never did. And now she’s having his baby, and only has three months to go.’
Peggy swallowed, making a strange swigging noise in her throat that caused her to pause what she was saying, and despondently she looked down at her cup and saucer once more. Barbara rubbed Peggy’s arm that was closest to her in sisterly support, expecting a fresh outburst of sobs.
The forthcoming baby would be the clincher that Bill had passed a point of no return as far as her sister was concerned, Barbara knew.
Peggy remained dry-eyed to her sister’s surprise, although her voice was quieter when she was able to continue, ‘Barbara, I’m ashamed to say I more or less told him to go to hell, and then I said to him that he’d never see Holly again.’
‘Of course that was what you said at this news, Peggy! Any woman would have told him that. I would have, make no mistake, and then probably gone a whole lot further as well.’
‘But who’s going to suffer, Barbara? Not Bill, as he’ll be back in MaureenFromTheNAAFI’s bed quicker than a rat can get up a drainpipe, I’ve no doubt, as he’s not the sort to stay on his own if he can help it, and I’m pretty certainly he’ll have found a way to sneak off camp to be with her whenever he can. She’s obviously keen on him, and so his nest is already feathered, even if it doesn’t feel like that to him just at the minute. And I’ll get over him – I’ll make sure of that as otherwise I’ll let his actions punish me every day and I refuse to do that. Obviously my heart feels shattered to smithereens, and I despise him for what he has done to me and Holly. But the thought we meant so little to him will help, and so I think if ever I waver I’ll remember how little he cared about us and so I’ll hold firm,’ said Peggy.
‘No, it’s little Holly who’ll pay the price, don’t you think?’ she went on. ‘The poor little mite is going to grow up knowing that while many brave and honest men will die in this war, a louse like her father is very probably going to come through it unscathed and end up living with some other family that he’ll have had after her, and with him completely forgetting that he already has a daughter. I’m old-fashioned as I do think a child needs both parents, but it’s not going to be the case for Holly as he’s a canker that needs to be removed from our lives, and so the poor dear thing will never know what it’s like to be loved and cherished by her very own father. That breaks my heart more than anything Bill Delbert could ever do to me, I’ll tell you that for nothing, Barbara.’
Now the tears arrived, and in torrents.
Her sister shuffled a little further up the bed and put both her arms around Peggy, who leant her head down and sobbed so violently against her that Barbara felt the bounce of her sister’s head against her breastbone. ‘It’s not fair, Peggy, you’re quite right. It’s not fair. But you will be able to give Holly enough love for two parents, I know you will, and with you by her side she couldn’t ask for better,’ Barbara said as reassuringly as she could. ‘And Ted and I, and Connie and Jessie, will never be far away, you know.’
After a while the sisters drew apart to stare dolefully at one another, and then in perfect unison they turned to look over at the old crib holding the peacefully sleeping baby girl who looked as if the only care in the world that she had right at that minute was whether to nap with her white knitted bootees on or off.
Chapter Eight
Milburn had a distinctly put-upon expression on her long face by the time Roger had been fully tutored by Ted in the proper way of putting her harness on and then how to connect the trap to the harness.
The children tried to help Roger by exuberantly calling out instructions (many right, but some unintentionally wrong), but this only further confused him, especially when Mabel tried to say what she thought he should do too, with the result that he kept getting in a pickle, and inevitably would do the various leather straps up either too loosely, too tightly, or in the wrong way.
And once Roger had finally got the harness on, only a bit askew, he then had difficulty in backing Milburn into the trap’s traces as he kept walking her backwards as if around a corner rather than keeping her moving in a straight line.
But Ted was very patient, as was Milburn, and suddenly the penny dropped, much to everyone’s delight, and Milburn wrinkled her velvety nostrils with what looked like relief.
Understandably, the children had started to become bored while Roger fiddled about and so they had started to do things like trying to push each other in the back of the knees, so that – if the timing were right – the unlucky recipient would be plunged forward and, if the timing was perfect, right down to the ground. As the boys were wearing short trousers and Connie a cotton summer dress Gracie had adapted for her from one of her own, it was likely that there’d be an array of bruises on the back of their legs that the children would be able to compare next morning.
‘Oi! Watch it!’ Ted had to be firm that that sort of behaviour was never to go on around Milburn, as it was the sort of thing that could lead to the pony getting unintentionally spooked and then somebody ending up hurt, he explained.
‘We didn’t mean anything,’ said Jessie.
‘I know, son, I know,’ Ted replied, ‘but none of you are used to big animals an’ yet yer ’ave to do their thinking for ‘em.’
Connie and Jessie looked at their friends with frowns, each twin seeming to forget that they had been happy to try to sneak up behind their pals to do likewise only a mere matter of moments ago. But their unhappy expressions reminded the others that their father hadn’t been in Harrogate long, and already he was having to lay down the law, which risked spoiling a nice day, and so for a little while all the children felt suitably chastened.
‘I’m sorry, Daddy.’ Connie sounded so contrite and in fact her saying she regretted anything was so out of the ordinary that Aiden immediately apologised too and then went and stood by Connie to show solidarity with her.
On the final run-through Roger managed to do it all very adequately with – best of all – no reminders from any of those watching him. And so it was then that with a smile, he stepped well away from Milburn to take a theatrically low bow, with one hand behind his back and the other swooping extravagantly towards the ground as he made a flurry of quickly delivered feathered waving gestures as if he were a nobleman bowing to his queen, and he was rewarded by an enthusiastic round of applause from his audience. Even Milburn tossed her head up and down, and whiffled her whiskers, as if she were agreeing with everyone that Roger had achieved a success of heroic proportions.
Ted asked Jessie to take hold of Milburn’s bridle just above the bit to keep her steady while he and Roger climbed up into the trap and took their seats on the driving bench. The ever-sensible Aiden passed up the whip to Ted, taking care to wrap the rope bit of it around the whippy bit and to move slowly in order not to startle the pony, as he’d been instructed.
‘I’ll drive Milburn round the block to see ’ow she goes, an’ then you take over, Roger,’ said Ted, and then he looked towards the children. ‘An’ you lot, you can walk wi’ us if yer likes, but keep jus’ behind us, out of ’arm’s way, an’ no messin’ about or shoutin’, mind. We don’t know whether she’ll spook easy an’ so let’s not ask fer trouble.’
Milburn lifted a front leg and stamped it down as she champed on her bit and tugged at the reins, clearly eager to be on her way.
With that, Ted neatly manoeuvred the pony through the yard and out onto the road, with Aiden and Jessie paying especially close attention to exactly how he managed to do this. They wanted to be doing it themselves before too long, and if they could grasp the technicalities before the other children, then so much the better. Larry and Connie followed, but Tommy stayed behind with Angela, offering to change the pony’s water and clean out her stall ready for when she came back.
Roger said a distracted ‘thank you’ to his son for thinking ahead and sorting Milburn’s stable, then immediately found himself gazing benevolently around as he sat beside Ted, before he turned back to smile at the children and give them a quick salute, looking as if he was enjoying the sun on his back on this lovely balmy day. Then, much to the twins’ amusement, Roger obviously remembered that he should be watching Ted more closely and so he tried to concentrate on what Ted was saying with a suitably attentive face.
After a while, Ted said ‘giddy up’ and gently touched Milburn with the whip on the flat of her broad back, and she broke into a smart trot. Ten minutes later the children were red-faced with the effort of racing along just behind the trap.
Next, Milburn was slowed down to an amble, before being made to walk out briskly, then to trot again, and turn left and right, and pull up from a trot to a dead halt, all of which she did as if she were an old hand. Finally Ted took her to a busier road, where there was some traffic moving along, to see what she was like near cars (not that there were very many as petrol rationing was biting), and buses and larger vehicles.
The game little chestnut did everything she was asked to do with the minimum amount of fuss, and she didn’t flinch or even flick an ear in the direction of the traffic. Ted said ‘good girl’ several times in appreciation, getting a twist of her ears in reply to him.
Back at Tall Trees, Ted halted her with a ‘whoa!’ and the application of a gentle pressure on her mouth, and then he handed the leather reins across to Roger, who took the gathered loops up cautiously and held them in the way Ted instructed, although he said he hadn’t enough hands just at the moment to cope with the whip as well, and so Ted said he’d hang on to that and that he really didn’t think Milburn needed it as she seemed to be very willing.
‘You need to make her think you know what you’re doin’, and then she’ll do what you want. She’s got a bit of spirit but she’s a nice pony, an’ you’ll ’ave the ’ang of ’er in no time,’ Ted promised.
Roger hoped that would indeed be the case, and then he clicked his tongue against his teeth in the way he had seen Ted do, and rather to his surprise Milburn began to walk forward on this command as if he were an old hand too in the pony-driving stakes.
Mabel had come out to see them off and she held up her hands in silent applause, and Roger couldn’t resist a little smirk in her direction, at which Mabel gave a dismissive downward wave of her hand, with a jolly call of ‘Gi’ over, Roger!’
This time they were out for quite a while longer, during which time Roger picked up the rudiments of driving the trap quite quickly, mastering the firm tones needed for the hups, walk-ons, giddy-ups and whoas much more easily than he or anyone else had expected, indeed so much so that the children quickly became bored again as there was a lot of walking, trotting, turning and stopping, and categorically no drama at all. Then Ted announced that it was getting on and Milburn had probably had almost enough, although they were going to give her a step out into the country before they brought her back to Tall Trees, and so while Ted didn’t mind giving each of the children a turn at driving the trap tomorrow, what he could say was that it wasn’t going to happen today and that the children should probably make their way home without them, to see what Tommy and Angela were up to.
It had been brewing for a while, but at this confirmation of nothing in it for them any longer, the children soon lost the last remnants of interest and, challenged by Larry to a race, they peeled off to gallop home as quickly as they could without even the tiniest moan of disappointment.
It was a much happier-looking Roger who drove the trap back into the yard half an hour later, and then untacked and sponged down a now sweaty Milburn, before popping her back in the neatly mucked-out stall that Tommy had got ready, all executed without a hitch.
He and Ted stood back to watch her drink, and then nodded at each other in the way that men sometimes do when they feel a job has been well done.
When Roger and Ted went into the kitchen it was to find Mabel, Peggy and Barbara all looking engrossed as they leant over the kitchen table.
Peggy got up to give Ted a hug, and he tried not to show his shock at the sight of her blotchy face and her bloodshot eyes peeping at him from underneath their swollen lids.
Peggy gave Ted a weak half-smile and then turned again to the kitchen table, which was covered with a swathe of white cotton fabric delicately sprigged with red, pink and blue summer flowers, and soon the women had their heads bent close together once more as they tried to pin the fabric to a pattern for a summer dress for Connie and eke out in the spaces around this enough material for a summer blouse for Peggy. It was like they were doing a very complicated jigsaw puzzle.
At the end of the table was piled a new pair of grey short trousers for Jessie and a grey shirt, while there was a newly knitted cardie for Connie that Barbara had knocked together in a striking shade of magenta three-ply.
In order to leave the women to it the men made themselves scarce, heading out to inspect the chicken coops and decide where the pen for a porker might go, if Roger brought one to Tall Trees.
Then Connie and Jessie called the dads over to see Milburn. They’d found Mabel’s large tom cat, Bucky, crouched on Milburn’s back, purring loudly and paddy-padding with his paws for all he was worth. Milburn seemed vaguely affronted and the angle of her ears seemed to say that it was a very warm day and she really didn’t need a hot-water bottle of a furry friend nestled on her loins although she wasn’t bothered enough to stop pulling hay from her hay net, nor did she do anything to dislodge Bucky.
Over in the kitchen there was now the not wholly pleasant smell of some bones bubbling in hot water in a sizeable saucepan on the hob. The bone-boiling went on every few weeks even though every single person at Tall Trees would moan about the distinctive and rather grim smell. But the resulting liquor would be later added to some diced ham hock, leeks and carrots, and left to set solid to make some brawn for supper on toast later in the week. To get rid of the aroma the back door had been propped open, with a curtain Peggy had made of dangling pieces of wool and string and other bits and bobs that she’d weighted at the bottom with wooden cotton reels, positioned across the top of the doorframe, to keep the flies out. As Bucky found the dangling reels irresistible to play with – and no amount of shooing would keep him away for long, which meant constant running repairs to the curtain – a persistent pair of fat bluebottles had made their way inside through the latest gap and were lazily flying in squares around the ceiling light.
