by Connie Monk
Pulling Beth away from her warder she dragged her to the back door and into the house just as Kathie opened the front door to Mr Dawkins’ knock.
‘A good start.’ Kathie smiled at him. ‘I don’t think you’ll have any cause to worry about her; she’ll be happy here.’
‘Of that I have no doubt. Now then, Mrs Hawthorne, there’s just the little matter of business to transact if I may step inside. Mrs Bullingham has given me back the payment record book. Each week you take it to her at the post office and she’ll pay you six shillings and four pence. You’ll sign the receipt and she’ll stamp the counterfoil. Another job added to the postmistress’s burden, she has to keep a tally of how much she has paid out each week and send the slips to the billeting office. And then there’s this – the child’s ration book and a note of her parents’ address.’
The formalities over, he shook her hand in farewell and departed. Kathie put the books in her handbag, and then went up to meet the new member of the family.
‘Mum, I’ve been telling Beth about collecting the eggs. Do you know what, Mum? She doesn’t know about chickens and eggs and things.’
‘I don’t expect you do, Beth. I didn’t know much about them until I came here to live. Do you like eggs?’
Beth nodded, then, holding her head an inch higher and seeming to take a huge step into her new life, she gave Kathie what was almost a smile and answered, ‘Eggs is my favourite, missus.’
Kathie laughed, reaching to lay a hand on the silky pale hair. ‘That’s a good thing,’ she said, ‘because thanks to the chickens, we have lots of them. But of course the chickens do make extra work and I’ve always been glad to have Jessie’s help. Now that you’re here, I shall have two helpers.’
Again Beth nodded, but her slim grasp on confidence had slipped from her fingers.
‘Jess, take Beth and show her round outside,’ Kathie said as they went downstairs. ‘Not just on the grass where you play, but show her how the things are grown. And introduce her to Sarah and Sally. They help in the garden, Beth, but they’re new too; they only started to work here yesterday. Coming from living in town it’ll all seem very different, Beth. I know it will because I used to live in a town before I came here and I had lots to get used to. But we all help each other.’
Beth stood with her head down, making no attempt to move off with Jess. It seemed she had something else to say. Visibly she forced out the words.
‘Thank you, missus, for letting me come here. I was that glad.’
Every impulse in Kathie made her want to hug the desolate little figure; but it was wiser to go slowly.
‘It was Jessie’s idea. You’re friends at school so it’ll be better for both of you to keep each other company. And I bet before long you’ll be helping with the jobs just like she does. There’s always work to be done on a place like this.’
‘Cor, missus, do you reckon I’ll be able to help?’
‘I’d bet my last shilling on it,’ Kathie answered with a laugh, just as Jess shouted for her trainee helper to buck up, they had to finish collecting the eggs. Kathie just stopped herself from calling out to say that she would finish collecting the eggs and shut the chickens up for the night herself while Jessie took Beth for a walk and showed her what was growing. A child who’d never seen a chicken-run, let alone been inside one, was more than likely to panic and drop an egg or two. But a broken egg was nothing compared with the giant step Beth’s self-confidence was about to take.
Then the telephone rang and she forgot the girls as she picked up the receiver knowing even before he spoke that it would be Dennis. She had been looking forward to telling him everything that had happened.
Three minutes would go so fast, but he started by saying he had another shilling ready to feed into the pay box when the operator interrupted them.
‘We’re moving off first thing in the morning. I don’t know where but don’t panic, it can’t be overseas, we still have to have more jabs. How are things going?’
When she told him she had engaged two sixteen-year-old girls for a moment his silence made her think he couldn’t have heard what she’d said.
Then: ‘Damn this war’, almost under his breath. Something warned her it might be wiser to change the subject so she told him about the addition to the family taking it for granted he would be of the same mind as she was herself.
She was wrong.
‘Kathie, oh Kathie, what the devil have you done a damn fool thing like that for? You knew I’d made it clear we couldn’t have an evacuee. You’ve got more than enough to do with only two useless girls to help you. Why didn’t you wait and get a man instead of grabbing the first to apply?’ She could tell from his voice that he wanted to criticize anything that hinted at a change to the way things had been. ‘I ought to be there. It’s bad enough that you’re having to be in charge, but at least with an experienced man I would have felt things might work out.’
‘I’m not a complete fool!’ There was an edge to her voice too. What was happening to them? He’d been gone only half a week, yet in those moments they were divided by something more than miles.
‘I can’t be sure of that if you can do anything as foolhardy as land yourself with some kid we don’t even know and without even asking what I thought about it. Never mind if it makes you feel stupid, I insist you’re to go back to Dawkins in the morning and tell him it isn’t going to work out – tell him that I object if you like – but say the child must be put somewhere else.’
‘I’ll do no such thing! Anyway, how can it make any difference to you if I take half a dozen poor little children into the house. You won’t have to look after them.’ Then quietly, she added, ‘But don’t talk about it now, Beth and Jess are just coming in. Listen – and this is important.’ And she told him about their meeting of spirits at a quarter to eight each evening, ending with, ‘Promise, Den. It’s important.’
His mood changed.
‘Oh Kathie, what a bloody mess it all is. Of course I promise. Is Jess there? Let me say hello to her. I’ve only got one more shilling to feed into the phone.’
Jess took the receiver, and Kathie moved just out of earshot holding out her hand to Beth to come with her. Obediently the uncertain child took it, taking a quick peep at her new minder.
‘Were there many eggs?’ Kathie asked in the same adult way she spoke to Jess.
‘We got six. I never seen a chicken, not with its fevvers, only hanging up in the butcher’s all white looking.’
‘There will be lots of things that are new to you in the country, Beth. I remember how exciting I found it when I first came. Did you meet Sarah and Sally?’
‘Yes missus.’ Just two words.
‘Mum, Dad wants to speak to you. It’s all right about a quarter to eight. He’s going to do it. Come and take the phone quickly cos his money’s nearly gone.’
‘Kathie . . . I still think you’re crazy. If only I could get home for a couple of hours I’d get you out of the hole you’ve dug yourself into. You’re all heart and no head – but I love you Kathie Hawthorne,’ he said, almost shyly; face-to-face he wouldn’t have said it and neither would she have wanted him too.
‘And I love you, Den Hawthorne.’ Then, with a laugh that seemed to bring them back to their normal day-to-day relationship: ‘Just as well we do, too; we’re stuck with each other.’
How many people must have been saying the same thing, even if the words were different? For them all, war was something to be lived through until life could be back in step marching towards the future they’d once taken for granted.
That evening as the three of them sat at the supper table Kathie told Beth she was going to write to her parents and suggested she might like to draw a picture to send.
‘Won’t be no use you writing to Tilly – that’s what I call her, that’s her name you see. She never learnt to read an’ write. But there’s Mrs Martin, she lives so that her door and Tilly’s are next to each other. If anything needs reading, that’s w
ho does it.’ The words had rushed out, but now she hesitated. Humiliation was written all over her. ‘But, missus, it won’t be no use you looking for a letter back, cos you see Tilly won’t know how to do it.’
‘A reply doesn’t matter. But it’s important for them to know what it’s like for you here. So I’ll write to them and hope that Mrs Martin reads it. Most important, though, what about if you draw a picture – maybe the chicken run with you and Jess collecting the eggs. Could you do that?’
The letter duly went, and with it Beth’s impression of egg collecting. As expected, no reply came.
It was a happy working atmosphere at Westways. Sarah and Sally were keen and quick to learn and with each passing day Kathie became more certain she had done the right thing to engage them. As for the children, they both did their jobs; Beth’s main responsibility being making their bed and putting their dirty clothes in the linen basket while Jess laid the breakfast table. The all-female establishment was running on oiled wheels.
‘Have you heard what’s happening up at the hall?’ Sarah said during the second week in September.
‘I thought the hall was unoccupied,’ Kathie answered, trying to sound interested while her concentration was fixed on finding the best marrows to cut.
‘Fancy you not knowing! I suppose tucked away down the lane here you don’t hear half the goings on. We knew there was a lot of work being done. There’s not much goes on that Dad doesn’t get wind of in the bar and people were saying they thought Sedgewood Hall must have been sold. Well, what would a great star like Richard Marley want with living in the sticks in Devon? He’s better off out there in Hollywood.’
Kathie knew something of the Marley family; it wouldn’t have been possible to live fifteen years at Westways and not be aware that the woods sloping down to a gate on the opposite side of the lane belonged to the big house, which had been in the Marley family since it was built nearly two hundred years before. She knew elderly Herbert Marley had died a year or two ago and his widow had moved away; she had heard that the grandson, Richard Marley, an actor and screen idol, had inherited as his own father had been killed in the Great War. None of it had particularly interested her, but clearly Sarah had other views.
‘Bang goes all our hopes that one of these days he’d come and stay in Sedgewood. Don’t you think he’s just gorgeous, Mrs Hawthorne? Or I suppose you never get to the flicks?’
‘Not a hope,’ Kathie answered with a laugh that showed she didn’t consider it any great miss. ‘I wonder who’s bought the Hall,’ she added, trying to show an interest. They really were such good girls, she thought, full of chatter and fun, but working all the time they talked.
‘That’s the thing,’ Sarah said. ‘Richard Marley hasn’t sold it; he’s rented it to a school, a boarding school for boys. Dad was told about it last night. The work is pretty well done and the school is moving in at the weekend. Be funny hearing a lot of noisy boys in the wood there.’
There the matter rested and as far as Kathie was concerned the conversation was soon forgotten.
A few days later, their breakfast eggs finished, the children were topping up with toast before going off to school when the snap of the letterbox told them the postman had brought something.
‘My turn to get it,’ Beth said running into the passage by the front door then returning with one envelope, ‘Mur . . . rur. That means mister. Do you have it, Mrs Hawthorne?’ In the beginning she had simply called Kathie ‘missus’ until she had started to feel at home with the name Hawthorne.
‘You can’t go on forever calling me Mrs Hawthorne. You’re one of us now. How would it be if you called me Auntie Kathie?’ Beth’s face flushed with some sort of emotion, but Kathie wasn’t sure what. ‘Don’t you think that’s better?’
‘Cor Mrs – Auntie Kathie. Cor! I never had an auntie. Aunties are people you don’t just know for a little while.’
‘Did neither of your parents have any sisters – or brothers?’
‘Tilly don’t have no one.’ She couldn’t cope with the bubbly excited feeling and remember how to speak at the same time. Then her thin little face broke into a beaming smile. ‘But now I got an auntie, I got an Auntie Kathie.’
The letter appeared to have been forgotten, but remembering she was still holding it she passed it to Kathie then climbed back on her chair to finish her toast and marmalade.
Looking at the two girls, so different and yet already really fond of each other, Kathie felt a tug of satisfaction. Skinny little Beth might be the runt of the establishment, but she was fitting in more firmly with each passing day.
When on the following Saturday morning they asked if they could go as far as the common to play she decided it could do no harm.
‘Yes, I’ll trust you to be careful. Listen for the clock at the Hall to strike twelve and then start to walk home. And promise not to talk to any strangers.’
‘Silly Mum,’ Jess chuckled, ‘there won’t be anyone on the common except us.’
‘Promise me, anyway.’
So they set off happily. Until that morning they had been allowed to play in the lane, but in sight of the cottage. At Westways the morning seemed to pass quickly. The sound of Sarah and Sally chatting and laughing as they worked, and the knowledge that Jess had a playmate, ought to have raised Kathie’s spirits; but she felt horribly alone. Most of the hours of her working day she found satisfaction in what she did – and pride in the knowledge that she was keeping their business going – but occasionally she would be overtaken by an empty feeling bordering on despair. It must be the same for thousands of women, she told herself. In fact she was luckier than so many, for she knew that she was carrying on Den’s work for him. But on that morning it was hard to feel lucky. There was only one way to win her battle and that was to work doubly hard. So that was what she did, until she heard the clock on Sedgewood Hall chime and then strike midday.
‘Time to knock off, girls,’ she called to them. ‘Your envelopes are on the kitchen table; you can collect them when you go in to change. Leave your hoes; I’ll probably do a bit this afternoon.
By a quarter past twelve they had gone, eager for their afternoon of freedom. But there was no sign of Jess and Beth. Surely it shouldn’t take them all this time to get back from the common.
Four
About fifty yards from the garden gate of Westways the narrowing lane finally gave up all pretence of being anything more than a track as it rounded a bend to the right. Never before had Jess been allowed to go to the common without an adult but, playing alone, the idea had never entered her head. Kathie had been so sure that the two of them together would come to no harm. But why else would they be so late? If, from Westways, she had heard the Hall clock strike midday then Jess and Beth couldn’t possibly have missed it.
Without even going back to shut the back door, she set out to look for them. As she reached the bend in the lane they came into view. Something must be wrong! Jessie’s face looked flushed and, surely, Beth was crying.
‘What happened? I was worried.’
‘Was a horrible man, Mum, kept shouting. And he’s going to beat Oliver. Wasn’t Oliver’s fault; he said he wasn’t allowed. But I persuaded him.’
Kathie had no idea what Jess was talking about or who Oliver was – or the horrible man who shouted either – but her overwhelming emotion was relief.
‘Well, I’m glad you’re both OK. Now let’s get home and you can tell me all about it.’ With one small hand in each of hers they started back to the cottage.
‘He told Oliver to go to the study and get the cane out ready, then sit and wait. Probably beating him by now. And he was so miserable,’ Beth croaked.
‘It was cos he was so miserable at that beastly school, Mum, that I knew we had to take him with us to play. We helped him climb back in and everything would have been all right if the horrible man hadn’t been there in the woods and seen him getting back over the gate. D’you know what, Mum? Oliver looked like an animal in a cage
at the zoo when we first saw him staring out through the bars of the gate. I told him that’s what he looked like.’
‘He didn’t start to cry till you said that,’ Beth voiced her opinion bravely, ‘it was being in a cage like you said that made him cry. Now he’s getting a whacking and the man said that afterwards he had to stay in his room all day for punishment. And we’re going home to dinner and more play. It’s not fair.’
‘When you’ve washed your hands you can start at the very beginning and tell me all about it.’
And that’s what they did. There was a padlocked gate from the woods of Sedgewood Hall onto the track and that’s where they found their new friend. Some children might have walked on by, but not Jess. So they stopped to talk and found the boy they called Oliver was seven and miserable at boarding school. That he had no friends was something Jess couldn’t understand but she wasn’t going to leave him lonely and crying. So, taking control (and Kathie could clearly imagine the scene) she helped him to climb the gate and off the three went to the common where they had a lovely morning and he forgot his troubles. Then when they got back the ‘horrible man’ caught him and shouted at him and sent him to his study to wait to be caned.
The image triggered Kathie’s anger. A man like that had no right to be in charge of young children – nor yet older ones, for what sort of an example did he set? She knew nothing about the school except that it had come from somewhere in the London area and all the boys boarded. She hated bullies and what else was he but a bully?
But the story wasn’t over.
‘And you know what?’ Jessie’s voice cut through her thoughts. ‘I told him that it wasn’t Oliver’s fault; it was me who made him escape. His face was red as anything and his eyes sort of popped out. He shouted at us that we had no business to hang around in the lane. Didn’t he, Beth?’
