Coming Home To Holly Close Farm

by Julie Houston

  And then hands were reaching out to her, grabbing at her as she ran, preventing her from running further, pulling her to the ground and holding her firm as she struggled against their restraint.

  31

  ‘She seems a lot more settled and comfortable now,’ Kylie, the nurse, said after shooing us all out from round the bed. ‘I really think you can go home. And I’m sorry I called you out – I’m new on this ward and I panicked a bit.’ She looked slightly embarrassed.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Mum tutted, patting Kylie’s arm. ‘Madge is very precious to us and if at any time you feel she is, you know… if you think she’s deteriorating then you must ring us. Night or day.’

  ‘Am I too late?’ Daisy, gasping for breath, came hurtling through the double doors and stared, wide-eyed, at the four of us standing rather awkwardly together as Kylie pulled curtains round Madge’s bed.

  ‘No, honestly, it’s OK.’ I put my arm through Daisy’s. ‘The nurse seemed to think she may have suffered another stroke and rang Mum, but it doesn’t look like it now. Just stick your head round and see her and then we have to be off.’

  ‘She actually looks a lot better than she did this morning,’ Daisy opined as we all trooped along the corridor towards the main door. There was something rather melancholy about the hospital at ten o’clock at night: the café selling endless cups of filthy coffee was closed, the shop selling newspapers and sweets was closed. We walked, dividing and immediately regrouping around a lone hospital cleaner wielding a mop and bucket, and descended the steps to the car park, all wondering what we should do next.

  Mum made the decision for us. ‘Right, why don’t we all come back to our place and have a drink? I’m sure I can rustle up something to eat for those of you who’ve not eaten. Or at least M&S can. And then,’ she looked meaningfully at Corey, ‘maybe we can finally get to the bottom of what really happened up at the farm the night of the shooting.’

  ‘Matis is in the car, Mum.’ Daisy turned to me. ‘You went off with the keys to Madge’s car, Charlie. Matis had to drive me over.’

  Mum frowned. ‘Who’s Matis when he’s at home?’

  ‘One of Josh Lee’s builders. I was having a drink with him.’

  ‘Well, bring him along as well. Everybody welcome.’

  ‘Probably best if I just get Matis to drop me off and then he can go back to the Jolly Sailor without me. This is family stuff.’

  ‘Are you OK with this?’ I asked Corey as we drove back to Westenbury. ‘They can be a bit of a mad bunch, especially if Mum has a drink and Vivienne, my other granny, is holding forth on Oscar Wilde.’

  Corey grinned. ‘Sounds good to me. And, really, I’d much rather be spending time with you than in my room at the Jolly Sailor.’

  I grinned back. ‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’

  ‘Take it as such. Really.’ He smiled again and stroked my arm. Goodness, if his arm-stroking was this good, what might his kissing be like? I had an overpowering need to find out.

  ‘I’m assuming you no longer have the badger?’ Corey asked as we walked into the garden towards the house.

  ‘God, no. Once Dad was sober he was really, really cross with us for bringing it home. They’re incredibly dangerous and if it had come round when we were lifting it into the car, it would have really gone for us. Dad didn’t want to take it to the surgery – badgers become stressed if they can smell where dogs have been – so he kept it anaesthetised in a cage in the shed, set its legs and then, while we up were at the hospital with Madge on Boxing Day, drove it the fifty miles to the badger sanctuary over at Merepoint.’

  ‘He sounds like a brilliant vet.’

  ‘We think so. He did rant and rave at us for bringing the thing home; said it was the worst Christmas present he’d ever received.’

  ‘We were pretty stupid, weren’t we? Jesus, when I think about it now.’ Corey pulled a face.

  ‘Darlings, do come in.’ Vivienne, wearing some sort of floaty gown, was ushering us into the sitting room as if she owned the place. ‘I don’t think we’ve met…?’ She fluttered her eyelashes – literally batted them – at Corey as she held out her hand. ‘Is this your builder chappie, darling? Goodness, you never said he was so good-looking.’ She stroked his arm. ‘Rather Robert Redford in his younger days.’

  I stared at Vivienne. Had she been drinking? ‘This is Corey, Granny. He’s the nephew of a very good friend of Madge’s from years back.

  ‘Oh, Granny Schmanny,’ Vivienne pouted. ‘Do call me Vivienne, Corey.’

  Jesus, was she speaking Yiddish now?

  ‘Viv,’ Mum yelled from the kitchen. ‘Get back in here. Your beans on toast are burning.’ She came towards us with a bottle of wine and several glasses. ‘Right, family stuff this,’ Mum sniffed, going back and closing the kitchen door firmly behind her. ‘My family, and I think we need a drink before we get started. Where are Daisy and Nancy? Now, you really do have to tell us everything you know, Corey.’

  ‘I’m not sure which bits you know and which you don’t?’ Corey frowned. ‘Uncle Jim has kept a diary of events.’

  ‘Not in The West Diaries?’ I was stunned. ‘Granny Madge is in The West Diaries?’

  ‘The West Diaries?’ Nancy was pale. ‘Jim West is my father? And he’s written about all this in his diaries?’

  ‘No. No, no, of course not,’ Corey was quick to reassure Nancy, who was looking quite ill. ‘The West Diaries are a compilation of Uncle Jim’s political career. Alongside those, he kept a personal diary, which he started when he was in the RAF and which he kept up for most of his life. He said he started the personal diary as soon as he met Madge – one night in The Ritz in 1943 – because he was so in love with her he just had to write about her. Hanging around at Bomber Command, waiting to get permission to take off, he’d spend the time writing. I’ve not seen them, but if they’re anything like his political diaries, they’ll be well written and, I assume, will be a brilliant social history of the war years.’ Corey paused.

  ‘But why didn’t he marry my mother?’ Nancy asked, almost crossly. ‘There she was, pregnant, alone.’

  ‘We know all this, Mother.’ Mum was impatient to get to the bits we didn’t.

  ‘You might,’ Nancy snapped. ‘But I have been kept in the dark about most of this.’

  Corey smiled. ‘I’m sorry, I keep forgetting I probably know more than you, having had it direct from the horse’s mouth, as it were.’

  ‘Which is what I should have had, all these years, from my mother.’ Nancy was not to be mollified. ‘I just do not understand why she kept it all such a secret.’

  ‘She was trying to protect you, I think, Granny.’ Daisy patted Nancy’s hand.

  ‘But from what? I’m a grown woman. I can understand, after what I went through as a child – and no one who’s not been through it could ever know how horrific it is to have your father splashed over the national papers as a burglar and murderer.’

  ‘Arthur knew Uncle Jim wasn’t dead.’ Corey went on. ‘There was confirmation at Bourne that he’d been found in a ditch in Holland, very badly injured but alive, and that he was in a military hospital before being transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp. Arthur, who’d obviously hoped his love rival was out of the picture, would have been one of the first to know Uncle Jim had survived. I assume he panicked, went straight over to see Madge to confirm his death. Apparently, Madge, pregnant,’ here Corey stopped and smiled at Nancy, ‘and in shock, married Arthur in order that she had a name and a home for the baby. She later told Uncle Jim she felt a good deal of herself had died when she learned of his death and went along with whatever was suggested by Arthur.’

  ‘So, when the war was over, why on earth didn’t your uncle Jim come up here to find Madge? If he was so in love with her – and Holly Close Farm – surely he’d have come looking for her?’

  Corey smiled. ‘He did. Unfortunately, Arthur saw him off at gun point.’

  Daisy frowned. ‘But he was a brave bo
mber pilot: a farmer with a shotgun wouldn’t have frightened him.’

  ‘It didn’t. Jim went up the lane to wait for Madge to come back from wherever she’d been. He saw her with her little girl…’ again Corey broke off and smiled at Nancy ‘… and he recalled, obviously not knowing she was actually his little girl, knowing that he just had to leave Madge to get on with the new life she’d made for herself with Arthur and their child.’

  ‘Really?’ Daisy and I exchanged glances. ‘Surely, you do anything if you’re in love.’

  ‘You have to remember that Uncle Jim, at this point, wasn’t at his most confident. He was back living at Ascot with his parents and without a job. He’d lost a leg and one side of his face was badly burned. I actually think, at this point, he was possibly going through some sort of breakdown. Maybe what today you’d call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?’

  ‘The poor man.’ Nancy, who I’d always thought as hard as nails, wiped away a tear. ‘And this was my father? Jim West? A squadron leader, a major political activist. Goodness, he could have been prime minister.’ She sighed. ‘And a viscount to boot.’

  Daisy nudged me and grinned. This was right up Nancy’s street.

  ‘So, when did Madge realise he was still alive?’ Mum asked. ‘Was it when James began to make a name for himself in government?’

  ‘I suppose eventually she would have done,’ Corey nodded. ‘But you have to remember this was the early 1950s. Most people didn’t have TV and, if she didn’t read a decent newspaper, I don’t suppose his name would have come up much. It was Uncle Jim’s cousin, Fran, and another WAAF, organising a reunion, that brought Madge back down to London and, after ten years, she finally discovered that Uncle Jim had survived.’

  ‘God, there’s a whole novel in this,’ Mum sighed dreamily, reaching for more wine and filling all our glasses.

  ‘So, this is the bit where it gets really interesting,’ Corey smiled, leaning forward in his chair. He had a captive audience and I could tell he was enjoying telling the story. ‘Uncle Jim was waiting for Madge as she was about to board her train back home. It must have been a terrible shock for her. Anyway, she didn’t get on the train and they spent the night together, realised they could no longer be apart and began making plans for the future. By this time, Uncle Jim was married to my aunt Constance: I think their respective families had always assumed they would marry and they did.’

  ‘Any children?’ Nancy asked eagerly. ‘Do I have half-brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No, I’m sorry, you don’t. Jim would have loved children – he’s that sort of man – but it never happened. That’s another reason why he felt he could leave Constance to be with Madge: there were no children involved. And obviously, by now, Jim knew that you, Nancy, were his.’

  ‘So, what happened? Why didn’t they get together?’ Nancy was agitated. ‘Why didn’t my real father come and be with us? With me?’

  ‘Several reasons. That night, the very night when Madge had returned from London after finding James again, was when the police decided to lie in wait for Arthur.’

  ‘Lie in wait for him? Whatever for?’ Vivienne, who’d obviously bolted her makeshift supper in the kitchen, had now joined us in the sitting room. ‘What had the poor man done?’

  ‘Poor man? He was a common thief,’ Nancy spat, all the years of shame and disgrace she’d endured making her almost tremble with fury. ‘You must have read the newspapers, Vivienne. You’re my age: you must remember it all. The litany of burglaries, the murder of two innocent policemen, the trial… the hanging.’

  I shuddered, catching Daisy’s eye. She was sitting with Mum, taking it all in.

  ‘Nancy, dear, I don’t recall any of this.’ Vivienne put a somewhat theatrical hand to her chest. ‘You were just a little girl, and as I wasn’t brought up round here and am quite a good few years younger than you are…’

  ‘All right, Vivienne.’ Mum glared at her mother-in-law.

  Nancy pushed a hand through her hair and breathed deeply. ‘Arthur Booth was the stereotype of a burglar in a cartoon. If he’d gone out at night wearing a striped sweater, with a black mask and a bag with “SWAG” written on it, it wouldn’t have surprised me. This area was full of textile mills and, after the war, all working to full capacity. Arthur broke into the offices at night, stealing the wages. He broke into just about every post office in Midhope, pinching stamps and postal orders.’

  ‘Uncle Jim told me that when they searched Holly Close Farm they found huge amounts of stolen property.’ Corey was eager to get on with the story. ‘Arthur tried, that night, after he’d shot the policemen, to cover his tracks by burning some of the stuff.’

  ‘But why on earth did he go from being a petty burglar to a murderer?’ Mum shook her head.

  ‘I bet he thought it was James out there, didn’t he?’ It suddenly made sense. ‘Madge had told him James was coming for her and Nancy.’

  Corey nodded. ‘The police had just begun to suspect Arthur of his nocturnal goings-on and had decided to lie in wait for him that night, hoping to catch him red-handed with his loot after a night’s burgling. Obviously, Arthur had no idea this was happening and the police – about six or seven of them, plain clothes as well as uniform, I believe – had spread out and were lying down in the grass, waiting. I think Arthur must have been so agitated, almost demented, at the thought of James suddenly appearing to whisk his wife and daughter off to London, he couldn’t sleep and instead was patrolling his land with his gun. There’s a road down at the bottom of the fields – he possibly imagined James might arrive that way – and when he came across a man in the grass and the man shouted his name, Arthur fired, assuming it was James. And kept on firing. It’s a terribly sad story.’

  None of us, even Vivienne, quite knew what to say. As Corey finished speaking, the door opened and Dad and Malvolio, returned from dealing with a cow with mastitis, trooped in. More wine was poured.

  ‘So, did all this come out at the trial in Leeds? You know, was it put forward in Arthur’s defence that it was mistaken identity?’ Dad looked towards Nancy: she, after all, had lived through the whole thing.

  ‘Not as far as I know.’ Nancy shook her head. ‘You have to remember I was only about nine when it happened, and the night of the actual shooting I was in Blackpool having a wonderful time with Aunt Lydia and my cousins. I can remember that holiday so well: the B and B down on the South Shore, Blackpool Tower, the donkey rides. Being with Uncle Isaac, as well. I was an only child and suddenly I was playing cricket with the boys, playing rough and tumble and wearing their old shorts instead of the starched little dresses Arthur was always buying me.’ Nancy smiled at the recollection. ‘Anyway, the press was all over the place for months, so I went to live with Aunt Lydia for the rest of the school holiday and I never went back to my old school. No one would really tell me what was going on, and I missed my dad – Arthur – terribly. Of course, eventually one of Lydia’s boys told me my dad was a burglar and a murderer and he was probably going be hanged.’ Nancy pulled her mouth down. ‘He got a real walloping from Aunt Lydia and his dad for that.’

  Poor little Nancy. Was it any wonder she’d turned into this rather brittle, defensive woman who Mum hadn’t got on with, preferring to stay with Madge whenever she could?

  ‘Obviously, as an adult, I’ve read the newspaper reports of the trial, but never have I come across any mention of James Montgomery-West. I’d absolutely no idea who he was or that he was my real father until Madge decided to drop her bombshell on Christmas Day.’ Nancy appeared to be as much in the dark as the rest of us, sitting there agog as the story unravelled.

  ‘Surely, once Arthur was…’ I had to think of the best way of saying it ‘… you know, no more, surely Madge was then a widow and totally free to be with James?’

  Nancy suddenly sat up straight and stared at Corey. You could almost see her mind working overtime, working out the puzzle, filling in the missing pieces.

  ‘Uncle Harry,’ she breathed,
looking at Corey for confirmation. ‘It was because of Uncle Harry, wasn’t it?’

  32

  ‘Uncle Harry? Who the hell’s Uncle Harry?’ Mum stared at Nancy. ‘I didn’t know you had an Uncle Harry.’

  ‘Ah,’ Vivienne was almost triumphant. ‘So, Madge fell in love with someone else, did she? Forgot all about this James chappie and moved on to someone else?’

  ‘Hardly,’ Nancy snapped, glaring at Vivienne. ‘Harry Wilding was a homosexual.’

  ‘A gay uncle?’ Mum frowned. ‘Well, you kept that one quiet.’

  ‘Seems to run in the family – keeping secrets.’ Nancy was cross.

  ‘Well, where is he now?’

  ‘Russia, more than likely.’

  ‘Russia?’ All heads turned back to Mum. It was a bit like being at Wimbledon.

  Nancy tutted and we all swivelled back in her direction. ‘Harry Wilding was a homosexual, British spy who defected to Moscow after the murders.’

  Game, set and match to Nancy on this one.

  Corey nodded. ‘Wilding was a fairly low-ranking member of British intelligence who worked as a double agent before defecting to the Soviet Union in 1954. He served as both an NKVD and KGB operative, but for a couple of years had been trying to keep his head down a long way from London and Moscow. I think, despite his preference for men, he was probably a little in love with Madge. I’ve tried to work it all out but, not having anything concrete to go on apart from what Uncle Jim has surmised over the years, I can only assume Madge and Wilding probably shared a love of reading, poetry and gardening. I’m sure both the Brits and the Soviets would have known where he was laying low but, what with the murders and the police and the press crawling all over the place, Wilding upped and left. I know he ended up in the Soviet Union some time later.’

  ‘None of this about Harry Wilding came up when we Googled about Arthur and the murders,’ Daisy said. ‘You’d have thought it would.’