Coming Home To Holly Close Farm

by Julie Houston

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve, love…’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Who is this? Are you booked…?’

  ‘Well, no.’

  ‘I can get someone there to you in two hours…’

  ‘Forget it. I’ll have frozen to death or be in a James Bond porn movie by then.’

  ‘A taxi…?’

  ‘Yes, a taxi. You know one of those things that pick people up and take them home. You are a taxi company, aren’t you?

  ‘Yes, darling, but no taxis left… It’s Christmas.’

  I was frozen and utterly, utterly pissed off. Oh, Dominic, where are you? Come and rescue me from this hell. Two fat tears splashed down my face and, before I could stop them, were joined by a whole waterfall until I was sobbing. You know, that awful sobbing like when you couldn’t do your maths at junior school and you can’t catch your breath so the exasperated teacher tells the other girls who’re gathering round, patting your back in sympathy, to leave you alone.

  By this time, I didn’t know if I was crying about my disappointment in Josh, for my nine-year-old self, for the sleet gathering in my antlers and making me look like a fucking Christmas tree, or Dominic. Josh, who might have been the one to get me over myself, had turned out to be a laughable damp squib. I wanted my sister.

  ‘Daisy,’ I cried and snorted down my mobile, ‘can you come and get me?’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Oh, don’t you start,’ I sobbed. ‘It’s me. I can’t get a taxi and I don’t want to be a reindeer or Pussy Galore. And it’s Christmas. And I haven’t got Dominic any more.’ Great sobs rent the sleety air, losing themselves in Josh’s privet hedge.

  ‘Shit. You are in a bad way. Hang on, I’ve got Granny Madge here. I picked her up from Almast on the way back from dropping you off. I thought it would be nice for her to be here rather than in Heaven on Christmas morning—’

  ‘Yes, yes, lovely,’ I cut Daisy off. ‘You are one very kind person, but can you just come and fetch me. Please? And bring a coat or a hoody. I’m frozen.’

  The last thing I wanted was Josh coming out into the garden, seeing me like this, so I went through his wooden garden gate and hunkered down by the wall to wait for Daisy. A taxi pulled up, spilling two tuxedoed James Bonds, one Dr No, two shivering and cursing Ursula Andresses (Andressii?) and a duck (obviously didn’t get the correct message either) onto the slippery pavement. Waving bottles of some lurid-looking liqueur, they slipped and slithered through the gate, desperate to get out of the wet and cold. The six-foot duck, bringing up the rear and catching sight of me, plus antlers and red nose, quacked a greeting and, without stopping, hurried after the others.

  ‘Reindeer Rescue Team.’ Daisy, wearing her panda bear onesie covered with Dad’s old visiting-sick-cows-in-the-middle-of-the-night mac, wound down her window and skidded to a halt, nearly finishing me off once and for all.

  ‘Thanks, Daise.’

  ‘You’re lucky. Madge and I were just about to get stuck into a bottle of Merlot. Ten minutes later and I’d have been over the limit. Come on, get in. I’ve a plate of beans on toast drying up in the oven.’

  I was suddenly hungry. Beans on toast, several glasses of red and more of Madge’s story sounded like heaven.

  ‘No! You’re joking,’ Daisy laughed, when I gave her a précis of Josh’s party. ‘You didn’t fancy it, then? You’re a woman of the world: might have been quite interesting; enjoyable even.’

  ‘Swinging with Rosa Klebb? I don’t think so. I’ve never been into women.’

  ‘How about blowing Blofeld…?’

  ‘Don’t be disgusting.’ I shuddered. ‘Just get me home, let me have a hot shower. Jesus, Daisy, watch that dog.’ Daisy swerved and skidded as a long black dog covered in snow ran into the road. ‘What the hell’s the matter with it? It hasn’t got any legs.’

  ‘That’s not a dog, it’s a bloody badger and I’ve hit it. Shit, it’ll have dented Madge’s car.’

  We were on the long unlit road that leads into the village of Westenbury, just five minutes or so from home. Sleet was still coming down as we jumped out of the car to inspect the damage both to the car and, more nervously, to the badger.

  ‘Be careful,’ I whispered. ‘Aren’t badgers vicious things? And full of TB? Does that TB jab we had at school still protect us?’

  ‘I think it’s dead,’ Daisy whispered back, distressed. ‘Hell, I’ve murdered something. Me, who wouldn’t hurt a living thing; even swat a fly or put salt on a slug.’

  ‘That’s not strictly true, Daisy, you know: I’ve seen you squash greenfly…’

  ‘Shall we ring Dad?’

  ‘Dad? He’s a vet, not a funeral director. Anyway, he’ll be far too stuck into the Christmas spirit to drive here.’

  ‘Well, we can’t leave it in the middle of the road. It could cause an accident.’

  ‘It already has. Come on, we’re going to have to get it into the hedge.’ Daisy and I moved towards it just as headlights picked out the cats’ eyes in the middle of the road, lighting up the strange tableau of reindeer, panda and dead badger to the oncoming driver.

  The car, a sporty-looking Porsche, which was definitely not the ideal mode of transport for a sleet-filled December night, pulled up and then skidded into the side of the road, narrowly missing all three of us. ‘You OK?’

  ‘Dead badger, that’s all,’ Daisy called more cheerily than she obviously felt. ‘We could just do with pulling it into the side so it doesn’t cause an accident.’

  The man – tall, blond-haired and in his early thirties – opened the door and got out. He was wearing faded Levi’s, a navy cashmere sweater and a navy duffel coat. He bent down to the badger. ‘It’s not dead,’ he said. ‘Just totally stunned, by the look of it.’

  ‘Charlie, we need to get it to Dad.’ Daisy, as much an animal-lover as Dad, couldn’t bear to see any creature hurt. She turned to the man. ‘If you could just help us lift it into the back seat, then we can take it home. Our dad’s a vet.’

  ‘Right.’ The man hesitated. ‘Aren’t they a bit, you know, vicious? Full of TB and fleas?’ Sleety snow was beginning to settle on the shoulders of his coat and he looked longingly towards the warmth of his car.

  ‘We can’t leave it here. Come on. You take its head and Charlie and I will take its back legs.’

  ‘Right, OK, if you’re sure. Just let me get my gloves.’ He ran back to his car.

  ‘I know him from somewhere,’ I hissed to Daisy. ‘Were we at school with him?’

  ‘Never seen him before in my life,’ Daisy shrugged. ‘He hasn’t got a Yorkshire accent. Nice car, though. Actually, rather nice all round. Shame we’re looking like a complete pair of morons.’

  ‘OK, let’s go for it.’ The man frowned. ‘I need to be back on the motorway as soon as I can. Right, one… two… three.’ We bent, we lifted and we hauled the thing into the back seat of Madge’s little car.

  ‘Jesus, it doesn’t half smell.’

  ‘Rough as a badger’s arse: that’s where it comes from.’ Daisy panted as she banged the car door closed.

  ‘Where what comes from?’ Both the man and I looked at Daisy.

  ‘The expression: Rough as a badger’s arse. From a badger.’

  ‘Right, OK, are you going to be all right? Do you have far to go?’ The man looked at his watch, obviously not wanting to hang around any longer.

  ‘Just up the road. We can put the badger in Dad’s shed until he comes home.’

  ‘If you’re sure. Cheerio.’

  ‘Merry Christmas,’ Daisy shouted as he climbed back into his car.

  He gave a wintry smile and a slight wave before skidding from the side of the road and heading in the direction of the M1.

  ‘I know him from somewhere,’ I said once more, as Daisy pulled into our drive. We’d both spent the last five minutes nervously glancing over our shoulder at the badger. What we’d have done if the thing had come to, God only knows.

  ‘MasterChef? Blue Peter
? Take That? I think he was in Take That,’ Daisy said as she parked as near to the shed as she could and gave a worried glance towards the creature. Had it just snuffled a bit?

  ‘Much too young for Take That,’ I said. ‘Gary Barlow must be pushing fifty now. Rather lovely, though, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Who? Gary Barlow? Oh, Badger Man? Absolutely. I bet you wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to leave the party if he’d been on offer. Ooh, can you imagine him in a cream tux?’

  I could.

  Manoeuvring the comatose badger out of Madge’s car and into Dad’s shed was a nightmare.

  ‘I now know,’ Daisy panted, ‘if we ever accidentally murder someone and have to roll the body up in a carpet… you know, like Richard Gere did in Unfaithful,… even if I had you to help me dispose of the victim… well, we just couldn’t do it… far too heavy… right a bit… mind his leg, I think it might be broken… left a bit… Jesus, it smells.’

  It took a good ten minutes to get the badger into Dad’s shed and, by the time we’d left it on the battered old sofa he kept in there, locked the door and hurried down the snowy path and into the warmth of the house, we were shattered. And smelly.

  ‘Badgers,’ Madge said, once we’d poured large glasses of Merlot for ourselves and explained what we’d been up to, ‘are incredibly clean creatures. Did you know they build a sett, separate from their living quarters, just for their latrine? No defecating on their own doorstep for badgers.’

  ‘You sound like David Attenborough,’ I smiled. ‘He’s about your age, isn’t he?’

  ‘Oh yes, I always had a bit of a thing for him.’

  ‘So, while we’re on men you’ve fancied, are you going to give us the next instalment of the James story? What happened after his father warned you off him? Was that it? Or did you see him again?’

  ‘Why don’t the pair of you go and have a shower? You really do smell quite dreadful, you know.’ Whether it was the effects of the red wine that Madge had got stuck into in Daisy’s absence, or relief in having escaped from Heaven for the night, it was hard to tell, but Madge seemed quite animated. ‘I’ll make you some fresh beans on toast – those others will be dried up by now – like I used to when you were little girls,’ she smiled, ‘and then I’ll tell you what I decided to do about James after his father had dropped me off at the underground.’

  As Daisy and I trooped upstairs to the bathroom, it suddenly came to me.

  ‘Badger Man. I know where I’ve seen him before. He’s the man who was standing at the back of the room upstairs at the Jolly Sailor. You know, the night of the speed dating? And then, I’m sure it was the same man – he had the same sort of car, anyway – who was driving down the lane to Holly Close Farm when I drove there with Josh on his motorbike a couple of days later.’

  23

  ‘Oh, Madge, I did warn you.’ Francesca sighed and placed thinly sliced ham sandwiches and sausage rolls onto large platters ready for the steward to take into the dining room. Although it was Saturday, and the Meteorological recruits were rarely in the school rooms at the weekend, there’d been some meeting of the tutors and those in charge of the Met officers at the various RAF bases around the south going on for most of the afternoon, and both Francesca and Madge were now on duty to provide an early supper for those involved. ‘And don’t let Briscoe see you upset. She’ll have a field day with you if she does.’

  ‘Ssh.’ Madge looked over the stainless-steel work surface to where Sergeant Briscoe was standing, ensuring anything that went into the dining area passed muster. ‘I can’t believe that I set off to Ascot this morning so excited to see James and now…’

  ‘And now Uncle George has given you the hard word?’

  Madge nodded and went to wash her hands at the cavernous sink. ‘He made it totally clear that I was too far down the pecking order to even be seen with James.’

  Francesca tutted and, after glancing in Briscoe’s direction, patted Madge’s arm somewhat patronisingly, Madge thought. ‘I told you, Madge. Remember this is my family; I know what they’re like. Totally antediluvian ideas about society and where one fits in that hierarchy. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘If I knew what the hell antediluvian and hierarchy meant …’ Madge snapped impatiently and then, with one eye on Briscoe, whispered, ‘He called me a milkman’s daughter, as if I was something he’d scrape from beneath his shoe.’

  ‘Well, forgive me, darling, if I’ve got this wrong, but your father is a milkman, isn’t he?’

  ‘Farmer, actually.’

  ‘Tenant farmer.’

  ‘Whose side are you on?’ Madge looked daggers at Fran as Sergeant Briscoe glared in turn at the pair of them. When Fran appeared to ignore Madge, seemingly giving all her attention to sprinkling the tiny ration of sugar onto the Golden Slices Madge had recently fried and left to cool on the wire, Madge elbowed her and hissed, ‘And, there was some woman at the house called Constance. A WAAF officer and big friend of the family?’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘What do you mean, “Ah”? Madge elbowed Fran once more. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Constance Crawford is the girl James’s parents expect him to marry.’

  ‘Gregory, you’ve spent the day having the life of Riley. Would it be too much to ask you to go and help the stewards out there?’ Sergeant Briscoe had appeared at Madge’s side without her realising.

  ‘Ma’am.’ Madge, her heart as heavy as the loaf of stale bread from which she’d recently cut the Golden Slices, made to unbutton her white overall and remove her kitchen head gear. Briscoe would have a dicky fit if she were to venture into the dining room amongst the top brass still wearing her kitchen whites.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Fran whispered, once Briscoe had returned to her spot at the door and was out of earshot.

  Madge brushed an angry hand across her eyes to wipe away the tears that had, despite her determination not to cry, made an appearance. ‘I can’t do anything, can I? I can’t take on and beat Lord blooming Montgomery-West, Winston Churchill’s friend and confidant. I’ll write to James and tell him I don’t want to see him any more and then as soon as I can, I’m going home to my mum and Lydia, my sister. I’ve not been home since I left Yorkshire in January. I reckon I’ve got at least three days’ leave owing to me.’ Madge stopped to blow her nose before hissing at Fran, ‘I’ve had enough of you damned southerners.’

  *

  By the end of that week Madge had applied for and been allowed compassionate leave, telling Sergeant Briscoe her grandmother was at death’s door and her mother was insisting she return home to make her final farewells. Briscoe, she knew, would most likely have snorted disparagingly and told her there was a war on and to get on with it, but Madge had hardly taken any leave in the eight months since joining up and Briscoe signed the travel warrant with little more than an accompanying sniff and raised eyebrows. James had, apparently, rung the Oxford Street base several times, leaving his number and asking that Madge call him in Bourne, but, instead, Madge wrote the most difficult letter of her life, thanking James for taking her to meet his parents but telling him that she didn’t think it a good idea for a WAAF of the lowliest rank to be getting involved with a squadron leader. As she signed the letter and addressed it, tears coursed down her face and onto her blue shirt collar until she was almost sick with sobbing.

  The train journey home seemed interminable in the last few days of an early September heat wave. Every carriage was crowded with service personnel, either on leave themselves or making their way to training camps in the north, and Madge wasn’t able to get a seat until she changed at Crewe before travelling on to Manchester and then to Midhope. It was almost seven in the evening by the time she left Midhope Station and walked up to the bus station, sweat trickling down her spine as she manoeuvred her kitbag from one arm to the other while she waited over an hour for the local bus to Westenbury and home.

  ‘You’re home, love. Let’s have a good look at you. Goodness, don’t you look smart in
that uniform! Do we have to salute you?’ Annie Gregory turned from her knitting and gave her younger daughter a long, appraising look.

  Madge smiled. ‘Not with that knitting needle in your hand, you don’t. I’m exhausted. I just want to get into my own bed and sleep for ever.’

  ‘Never mind sleeping, Madge: we want to hear everything. And now you’re a cook,’ she smiled, ‘you can make the dinner tomorrow while I’m at church.’

  ‘Mum, I’m no better a cook than when I left. I can make a decent Welsh rarebit and that’s about it. They should have let me be a Met girl, like I wanted.’

  ‘I saw Mrs Booth down in the Co-op yesterday.’ Annie gave Madge a sideways glance in order to gauge Madge’s reaction. ‘Arthur’s got leave too, you know. Got three or four days before he has to go back.’

  ‘Right.’ Madge’s heart sank. The last thing she wanted was a tussle with Arthur. She’d managed to keep out of his way the last couple of months, ignoring his letters and telling whoever took his phone calls at the training school to tell Arthur she was on duty and couldn’t come to the phone. She felt terribly guilty and knew she should finish their relationship and give Arthur a chance to meet someone else. Maybe that was one job she’d have to do in the next couple of days; there was no chance he wouldn’t be calling round to see her once he knew she was home.

  Madge slept for fourteen solid hours that Saturday night, falling into her narrow single bed with the blue quilted eiderdown and crying over James until exhaustion took hold and she fell into a dreamless sleep.

  She woke, glad that she didn’t have to wear her uniform for the next couple of days and, buttoning herself into a faded summer dress she knew would be in the heavy oak wardrobe where she’d left it last summer, went downstairs to see if Annie had left the breakfast table laid before heading off to church with Isaac, Madge’s youngest brother. Isaac had always been different. At twenty-three, he should have joined up like Silas, Joseph and herself, but there was no way any recruiting officer would have passed him fit to fight for his country. He was just Isaac, happy to be on the farm with his dad and tucked up in his own bed every night. He’d been teased and bullied at school – God knows how he would have survived the wrath of a regimental sergeant major when he didn’t even know his left from his right and, when nervous, couldn’t speak without stammering – until Madge’s dad had had enough, walked down to the school and, despite warnings from the Education Board, pulled Isaac out, just twelve and with a couple of years of compulsory schooling still to go. In a different era, Madge supposed, as she poured tea from the huge blue and white striped teapot and cut herself a wedge of bread from a large white loaf, he’d have been known as the village idiot.