‘What did you think of him?’ Ruth asked Alice as the two of them sauntered the short distance back to her flat. Alice shrugged and said that Charles Maitland was clearly a man who knew what he wanted.
‘So…will you accept the job?’
‘He hasn’t offered me a job!’
‘But he will, darling! I’d put money on it!’
The air was filled with the scent of the lilac tree they were passing. It reminded Alice sharply of the garden in Twickenham where, until the onset of the war, she had lived with her husband and her young son. Tomorrow’s appointment in the courts of law loomed suddenly and depressingly.
Then, through the distant hum of traffic, a foreign sound asserted itself high above them. It was the burbling, whining stutter of an approaching engine. Ruth, identifying it at once, hesitated. When the noise above them spluttered suddenly into silence she caught Alice by the wrist and hauled her through a gate and into a front garden. Alice was conscious of being forced violently down onto hard, gritty earth, of her cheek connecting painfully with musty bricks, and of Ruth on the ground beside her. The seconds between the cutting-out of the engine and the impact, as the device struck the road two hundred yards from them, seemed eerily silent and impossibly long. Then they were enveloped in the concussion as the explosion fractured the air around them and rocked the earth beneath them. Instinctively they both protected their heads, pressing their faces against the ground while the air thickened with choking dust and debris thudded down around them. Various sounds began to erupt at the scene of the impact. A fire engine’s bell was already approaching from the distance. People were shouting.
‘You all right?’ Ruth asked, without moving. They both sat up. There were dead leaves in their hair. The back of Alice’s left hand was bleeding and her frock was torn where the thorns of an unpruned rose tree had snagged it.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘You?’ Ruth nodded and they got shakily to their feet.
‘That was our first big adventure together in a very long time!’ Ruth said. And for a moment and partly because of the shock, they stood, holding on to one another and giggling like the two schoolgirls they had once been.
Chapter Six
Roger Bayliss was at Ledburton Halt when the train from London arrived, almost an hour late, and Alice stepped down onto the platform.
‘Did Rose manage supper?’ she asked anxiously. The delayed train meant that Rose had been single-handed for a third night.
‘She certainly did,’ Roger assured her, handing her into the passenger seat of his car. ‘She and young Hester make a good team.’
‘So I am to be made redundant, am I?’ Alice smiled, adding, when Roger turned off the Ledburton road, ‘Where are we going?’
He drove her to a village pub where the best on offer in the way of food was a thick vegetable soup and slices of homemade bread, which, Alice assured Roger, was exactly what she wanted.
He, without appearing to pry, was keen to know how she had coped with the past three days and whether the divorce hearing had depressed her. Then he noticed the sticking plaster on her hand and the purplish bruise that was discolouring the skin around it. Concerned, he took her by the wrist and examined what he could see of the wound.
‘What’s this?’ he asked. She described to him what had happened to her and Ruth on the evening before last.
‘We were both terribly lucky,’ she concluded. ‘If Ruth hadn’t known exactly what to do and shoved us down behind somebody’s garden wall, we might have been killed!’
‘On the other hand,’ Roger said tightly, ‘if it hadn’t been for this Ruth person, you wouldn’t have been there in the first place.’
‘True,’ Alice said, accepting a second helping of the soup. ‘But neither would I have met a man who will possibly be very useful to me when I pursue my ambition to design kitchens. Ever heard of a Charles Maitland?’ Roger shook his head. ‘He’s a design consultant for Woodrow and Bradshaw’s,’ Alice announced, glancing at Roger and expecting him to be impressed by this information. The company was well known as a major player in the construction industry and Roger had heard of it.
At any other time his concern might have been a vague anxiety that Alice’s proposed career was going to threaten his own half formed – and possibly also only half admitted – plans for the future, but now it was focused on her well-being. In the space of three days she had been summoned to a court of law, her marriage had been officially ended, she had narrowly escaped an horrendous death and she had a wounded hand.
‘I think we should go,’ he said firmly. ‘I wouldn’t have brought you here if I had known what you’ve been through. You need rest. Come on. Let’s get you back to the farm!’ He got to his feet and was holding her coat, ready for her to slip her arms into it, when he realised that she was laughing at him.
‘You are very sweet!’ she said, ‘but I’m absolutely fine! Honestly! Apart from being ravenously hungry. I want to finish my soup. Sit down, Roger, and don’t fuss!’
He sat down and watched as she bit into a slice of the bread. ‘All I need is food!’ she said with her mouth full. He was smiling at her now, relieved to see that she was, as she insisted, absolutely fine.
One of the number of things that Roger admired about Alice was her directness and the fact that she knew what she wanted and, increasingly, was not afraid to try to get it. He was more used to women who followed his lead. His wife, who had been considerably younger than he, had been submissive. His female servants took his instructions and obeyed them without argument. Even the formidable Margery Brewster knew her place in the pecking order and although she sometimes made it clear with a lift of her eyebrows that she did not personally agree with one or other of his decisions, she rarely opposed them.
Although initially insecure and lacking in confidence in her ability to run his hostel for him, Alice, he had soon sensed, always knew her own mind. As her skills developed and her self-assurance had grown, she had, when necessary, been robust in defence of her decisions where the girls in her care were concerned. It had been she who questioned Roger’s refusal to let Chrissie go to Plymouth to meet with her sailor husband. She who had refused to divulge the identity of the girl who had alibied Chrissie when, with tragic results, she broke the hostel rules and went anyway. She had defended Mabel when she smuggled her young soldier brother into a hayloft for the night. It was she who persuaded Roger to be generous when one girl or another needed leave in order to sort out a personal problem. And it had been Alice who tried – and was continuing to try – to create a reconciliation between him and his son, whose dismissal from the RAF and subsequent adoption of pacifism seemed to have become an insurmountable difficulty between them.
Roger did not always concur with Alice’s actions and some of them, such as her solution to the problem of Winnie’s pregnancy and abortion, he knew nothing whatsoever about, but he always respected her views, even when he opposed them. Sometimes, waking in the small hours of the long winter nights, he would wonder whether, after all, her judgement, on one occasion or another, might have been the right one.
‘One thing,’ Alice said, laying down her soup spoon. ‘I’d rather Edward John didn’t know the details of the doodlebug incident. It would only worry him.’ Roger agreed not to say anything. ‘I might tell him a bit about it,’ she added, ‘mainly because I’m so hopeless at keeping anything from him. But not the details. And certainly not how close it was.’
There was a short, companionable silence in which Roger enjoyed the way Alice’s hair, slightly loosened by her protracted train journey, was framing her face.
‘When it was happening,’ she continued, ‘all I could think of was how awful it would be for Edward John if I got killed. I suppose he’d have to go to James and his new wife if I died. I don’t think he would be happy, do you? Living with a stepmother and half-brother or -sister?’
‘What about godparents?’ Roger enquired. ‘Up to scratch, are they?’
Alice smiled. ‘
My brother-in-law, Richard, is one,’ she said. ‘But he’s turned out to be the archetypal bachelor. Postal orders and Meccano pieces for birthdays. You know the sort of thing. Sweet man but hardly a father figure. I was hoping he’d marry some nice girl and provide Edward John with lots of cousins, but there you go, the “best-laid plans” again. And Ruth is his godmother. She’s my greatest friend but she wouldn’t get many marks for maternal instincts, bless her. You are the one, of course.’ She was almost thinking aloud, relaxing in the sympathetic attention of a man she respected and trusted, more, possibly, than she was aware of.
‘Me?’ Roger asked, taken by surprise. ‘I’m what one?’
‘The one he admires. You are everything he aspires to be!’
‘Me?’ Roger repeated incredulously.
‘Of course, you!’ Alice was laughing at his astonishment. ‘He’s mad about farming! You’re a successful farmer. You’re good to your stock. You treat your employees well.’
‘Oh, come on, Alice! You make me sound like the patron saint of agriculture!’
‘Well that’s more or less what Edward John thinks you are! Did you know he wants to farm when he grows up – or possibly be a vet – until I told him how long and complicated the training for that would be. He admires you enormously, Roger. So, watch your step! I don’t want him disillusioned or led astray!’ She saw his face cloud. ‘What?’ she asked.
‘Nothing, really… I was just thinking about Christopher,’ he said. ‘He’s never shown any interest in the farm. It was always machinery and engines with him. Bikes and then cars and then planes. Things with wheels and wings.’
‘He’s running your woodland now. That’s almost farming, don’t you think?’ Roger obviously did not. ‘Anyway, he was a brilliant pilot,’ Alice continued, surprised, not for the first time, by Roger’s apparent lack of pride in his son’s achievements. ‘His record was formidable.’
‘Yes,’ Roger said. ‘It was. Impressive by any standards.’ Alice saw his expression become a blank mask of…what was it? Resignation? ‘But then he cracked up,’ he added, heavily, staring past her, across the empty bar.
‘You said that as though he was somehow to blame for it!’ When he failed to respond, she continued, ‘Surely you don’t—’
‘He deserted, Alice,’ he said, as though suddenly aware of her question and forced to address it. ‘He went absent without leave. He ran. They found him cowering in my sheep shed.’
Alice had always suspected that Roger was, for some reason, ashamed of Christopher’s breakdown. This was the first time in the ten months since it had happened that he had admitted it. It was, she sensed, some kind of breakthrough. A crack in his ice. The barrier, which had seemed impenetrable, and behind which Roger concealed his feelings about his son, was, perhaps, about to be breached. She sensed that she must tread carefully.
‘He cracked up, Roger,’ she said gently. ‘It was a complete physical and mental breakdown. Something that happened to lots of pilots. Especially when, like Christopher, they’d flown more missions than they should have done!’
‘They call it LMF, Alice. It means “lacking moral fortitude”. That’s what it said on his discharge papers.’ Roger told her, in a low voice. Alice already knew this. She remembered the day when, having been to visit Christopher in the psychiatric ward in which he was slowly recovering, Georgina had told her how Christopher had shown her the official news, a typewritten message on a sheet of buff paper, which his father had, that morning, delivered to him.
Georgina had been outraged, not only by the callous treatment meted out by Christopher’s superiors in Fighter Command but by Roger’s attitude to his son. Neither she nor Alice had been able to comprehend it, although, unlike Georgina, Alice was convinced that there had to be some explanation for it. She sat now, across the table from Roger, her empty soup bowl in front of her.
‘Yes, I know,’ she said eventually, and when he looked at her in surprise, added, ‘Georgina told me.’ Roger remembered the occasion, soon after Christopher had been captured by the military police and after a brief interment in a military prison before being transferred to hospital, when Georgina Webster, the most highly educated and articulate of his land girls, had burst into his office and demanded to know when he intended to visit his son. Faced with his prevarication she had told him that if he would not go, she would. Then she had stormed out, shutting his office door with an emphasis that had left him in no doubt about the level of her disapproval.
‘It was none of Miss Webster’s business,’ Roger said almost reproachfully, his expression suggesting to Alice that he did not consider it to be any of her business, either.
‘She was a bit in love with him, Roger,’ Alice said. ‘And that made her feel…’ She searched for the right word. ‘Protective,’ she finished.
‘You’re using the past tense. Doesn’t she care for him any more?’
‘I’m not sure how she feels about him now. I don’t think she knows herself.’
Alice considered that the conversation had gone far enough. She also felt, quite suddenly, exhausted by the events of the last few days. This must have been evident to Roger because he got to his feet.
‘You are tired,’ he said, reading her. ‘Don’t deny it, my dear. Come on. I’ll drive you home.’
It was just after ten o’clock when they arrived at Lower Post Stone Farm and Rose Crocker was either in the act of locking the door for the night, or of going out into the porch, not for the first time that evening, to search the darkness for a glimmer of light from the dimmed headlights of her employer’s approaching car.
Most of the girls had delayed going to bed until the warden was safely home. They had felt, although some of them would not have admitted it, oddly bereft during her absence. Now they gathered, smiling, in the door to the recreation room to say hello to Alice and ask if she was all right.
‘We’re ever so glad you’re home, Mrs Todd!’ Mabel was glowing with pleasure. ‘We ’aven’t ’alf missed you!’
‘It felt that peculiar with you not here, didn’t it, Marion?’ Winnie said, and Marion nodded in agreement. Rose Crocker was, however, already bristling.
‘Come along, young lady!’ she called to Hester, who, having insisted on staying in the farmhouse until Alice had returned to it, was now required to cross the yard with her landlady. ‘Time you was in your bed… And I reckon I knows when I’m not wanted!’ Rose felt unappreciated and showed it, pursing her lips, lowering her head and making for the door. There were repressed sniggers from one or two of the girls.
‘Mr Bayliss tells me you managed splendidly, Rose!’ Alice announced loudly, adding, ‘Say thank you to Rose, everyone, for looking after you all so well!’
‘Thank you, Rose!’ they chorused, some more enthusiastically than others.
‘Mrs Crocker to you!’ Rose said firmly, gratified, despite herself, for the acknowledgment of her efficiency as a stand-in for the warden. Turning to Alice, she told her there was some supper on the kitchen table, ‘If you ’as a mind to eat and I reckon you should. Bain’t healthy going to bed on an empty stomach.’
More to please Rose than anything, Alice ate the ham sandwich and spooned up the junket that Rose had left out for her. The girls, except for Annie, who was making cocoa for herself and for Alice, trailed off to their beds.
‘All done and dusted now, then, is it? The divorce, I mean.’ Annie asked, spooning cocoa powder into their cups. A year ago Alice would have declined to discuss her personal life with an uneducated girl from the East End of London and might even have considered Annie impertinent but, as she looked into the wide, dark eyes, she understood that the question was not asked out of idle curiosity but from a genuine concern for her feelings.
‘Not quite,’ she answered. ‘You get something called a decree nisi first and then, later, a decree absolute. But, in effect, yes, it’s all done and dusted now.’
‘But has it upset you, though?’
‘Not too much, Annie. I’
d got used to the fact that it was going to happen. And now…now I’m glad it’s over. Or soon will be.’
‘And then you can start looking round for—’
Alice interrupted her with a dismissive laugh. ‘A new husband? I don’t think so!’
‘Once bitten, twice shy, you mean?’
‘That might have a bearing on it, if the occasion arose…which it probably won’t!’ Alice gazed into space for a moment and then said, almost to herself, ‘No. Somehow I don’t see myself being someone’s wife a second time.’ Then she turned, smiling, to Annie, ‘Now that I find myself with a sort of second chance in life, I rather fancy trying a career.’
‘With your kitchen design business, you mean?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Well, you’re ever so good at it!’ Annie looked approvingly round at the well-organised and functional layout of the farmhouse kitchen. ‘Look what you’ve done with this place! It was a cross between a coal-hole and a dungeon when we first come ’ere!’ They smiled, remembering the struggle it had been to persuade first Margery Brewster and then Roger Bayliss himself that Alice’s proposed alterations to the kitchen would be not only cost-effective but relatively inexpensive.
‘I’m a bit tired, Annie,’ Alice said, getting to her feet. ‘I’m off to bed.’ Annie picked up the junket bowl and the two cocoa cups and as she carried them into the scullery she wished Alice goodnight.
The Girl at the Farmhouse Gate Page 12
