by Connie Monk
‘Careful, it’s as rough as sandpaper.’ She tried to bring a lighter note. Her heart was thumping; she had a million butterflies in her stomach. ‘Bruce . . . we promised, but how can we pretend? What can we do?’ She wasn’t crying, how could she be when there were no tears? Yet her whole body was shaking as dry, rasping sobs shook her. Tenderly he drew her into his arms.
‘I know, my darling Kathie, inside I feel half dead with misery. Years and years ahead of us, making a charade of our lives. Could you play it differently? Could I?’ He felt the movement against his cheek as she shook her head. ‘Lying awake last night I thought of you with him, of how he must have longed to be as he used to be. I saw you lying in his arms. I even forgot his injuries as I pictured him making love to you. I’d never realized that jealousy could fill me with such hatred. Then, I felt sick with shame that I could resent a man who had lost his future – and, with Jess, so much of his past too. You are all he has.’
This time he knew she nodded.
‘And I do love him, of course I do. Are we kicking against losing our youth? Are we pining for romance to fill our lives?’
This time his laugh was natural. ‘I’m not pining for it; it seems to have taken possession of me. And as for you, you have a spark of eternal youth. Never let it die, Kathie.’ Then holding her away from him and speaking in a matter-of-fact voice, he continued, ‘I had a second reason for coming this morning. There are still three weeks before the Brockleigh term starts. I can’t kick my heels at the Hall, keeping away from here as I must. So when I leave Bath I shall take a train to . . . to . . . I’m not sure, but somewhere where I can be alone and walk. I have to be back a week or so before the start of term but we must have some time apart, where we can’t be tempted to see each other.’
She nodded. He had talked of the hopelessness of Dennis’s future, but at that moment if she tried to look ahead she seemed to see nothing but years of joyless monotony.
‘May Nanny continue to bring Elspeth here? You won’t hold it against her that this has happened to us?’ His question surprised her. In her mind there was no connection between poor childlike Elspeth and the torment of her own feelings for Bruce.
‘Silly question! Of course they’re welcome to come as often as they like. Beth looks on walking with Elspeth as her special prerogative.’
‘Beth is an unusual child. I have watched them together, and I don’t think there is anyone – anyone at all other than Beth – who can bring that look to Elspeth’s face. She comes to life. Not as a woman, but with all the innocent joy of a child. Beth was lucky when she was sent into your care; but you are privileged to be her mentor.’
They faced each other as they talked, but they didn’t quite let their eyes meet.
‘I must get on,’ she said with a too-bright smile. ‘I have a market garden to run.’
‘Yes.’ He moved towards the entrance of the porch but stopped before he stepped out onto the front path. ‘Kathie,’ he said and there was no way he could keep the emotion from his voice, ‘don’t let us – all this – don’t let it get in the way of finding the happiness you and Dennis used to know. He needs all the love you can give. What was it you said the other evening, that this is just midsummer madness.’
‘Yes,’ she said tonelessly, like an obedient child. Then, the words coming in a rush, she added, ‘Bruce, don’t stay away from us. Even neighbours can be friends. Den hasn’t a jealous streak in him and he’d never consider even midsummer madness possible for me. Promise when you come back you’ll come – I don’t mean to work, you’ll be busy at school – but just as a friendly neighbour.’
‘He might like some male company.’
She too had moved towards the front garden and for a moment their hands met and gripped before he walked down the short path and into the lane.
Although Sedgewood was miles away from the dogfights which were taking place in the skies over the south east of the country, people everywhere listened to each news bulletin and despite an underlying fear for what might lie ahead, a new pride was being born. And when late in September Winston Churchill’s voice was carried to every corner of the land proclaiming that ‘never had so much been owed by so many to so few’ there was a surge of hope. The end may be a long way off, but this was the end of the beginning. The threat of invasion had been lifted by the courage of young fighter pilots. The newspapers referred to the Battle of Britain, a battle fought and won in the skies and, coming so soon after the retreat from Dunkirk, it added steel to the people’s determination.
At the start of a fresh school year in the third week of September a new working party took up the cudgels in the market garden. On the first Saturday morning of term Bruce came to introduce them to their first insight into the working world. Sally and Sarah looked on from behind the shield of runner beans; they were seventeen and considered themselves too adult to be attracted to mere schoolboys. In fact, back in June when Bert had spent much of his leave working at Westways, Sarah had brought her Brownie box camera to work with her. He had given her no encouragement, neither had she needed any. Ten years older than her, perhaps he had a girlfriend in the village. Sarah knew nothing about his life and she was young enough to find all the excitement she craved in keeping his pictures, listening to his name being mentioned and weaving her dreams around the time when another leave would bring him back to Sedgewood.
‘Here, Sal,’ she hissed to her friend further along the row of beans, ‘look at the one talking to Mr Meredith. Bet he’s outgrown his school cap! Gorgeous, isn’t he.’
Sally had already noticed the good-looking dark-haired lad with the headmaster, but she wasn’t going to admit to her interest, not even to Sarah.
‘Hope he’s as strong as he looks. That’s what we need here, Sarah, someone with brawn to help with the winter digging. Mrs H’ll have to use the digger like she did last year but think how rotten it’ll be for him to have to sit doing nothing while she struggles with it.’
‘Maybe that’s what she’ll set the boys to do. She won’t have that much time herself, not with him to look after. She must have to do everything for him – however could she get him in a bath? If he were mine he’d have to stay dirty.’
They laughed good-naturedly, enjoying the images that sprang to mind, but not without sympathy. Then, sizing up the spoils of their labours, they decided that they had plenty to box up for the school delivery.
‘Claudia’s come,’ Sally observed, ‘but she seems to have given up helping in the garden.’
‘Got a garden of her own these days. She looks so sort of posh and better than everyone else, but when you get to know her I reckon she’s great. I miss having her working here, don’t you?’
‘Yes, she – what was it my old gran used to say about anyone who made everything seem like fun? It was something like being “a bit of God-given sunshine that warms the soul”.’
‘A bit mushy, but it’s sort of right. See how Mr H perks up when she comes for him,’ Sarah said, having a good view of the patch of grass from behind her shield of runner bean leaves. ‘I wonder Mrs H doesn’t feel her nose is being put out of joint.’
‘Don’t be a nit,’ Sally laughed. ‘Claudia may be a bit of God-given sunshine, but she’s not likely to fall for poor Mr H. And I expect it’s a relief to have him occupied for the day; it must be an awful strain on Mrs H to watch after him and work in the field too. Let’s go and weigh up what we’ve picked and put them with the other things for the school.’
The handsome young lad with Bruce was forgotten as Kathie bore him away to initiate him and the other two who had come for the first shift into the tasks she had lined up. Claudia wandered over to say hello; Bruce went to talk to Dennis before returning to the school, then while Kathie and her team of three boys and two girls set to work, Claudia went back to Dennis.
What a relief it was to Kathie to hear them talking, even laughing. Claudia had always been a welcome visitor, but never more than now.
With autumn the weather broke,
something that Kathie had been dreading. To sit outside was a thing of the past, but there were plenty of gloriously bright days. What was the magic in Claudia that made Dennis fall in with her plan that they should walk – or in his case sit – to the Boatman’s Arms, an ancient inn by the River Dere. It was quite two miles away, and once out of the village there were no footpaths, but the road was smooth.
‘We might get there and find it closed with a sign on the door telling us there is no beer,’ Dennis warned her.
‘Then we’ll have enjoyed the walk anyway,’ she answered cheerfully, forgetting that ‘walk’ was hardly an accurate description.
‘Claudia, you have much better things to do with your days than push a useless hulk like me around. I feel—’
‘I’m not pushing this chair just out of kindness, Den. I thought we had fun together. Stop grizzling and keep your fingers crossed that the pub’s open. Which way do we go at this T-junction?’
Occasionally there would be a day when Claudia didn’t come to Westways. She had other things to do – a trip to Exeter, a hairdresser appointment, a visit to the manicurist to have her nails painted, fingers and toes too. Like a lost soul Dennis would stare into space, his mouth turning down at the corners, his eyes seeing nothing. Kathie tried to arouse his interest in the work she was doing in the field, ask his opinion even though she had been managing very well without it while he was away. With a bored shrug of his shoulders he would answer her questions then pick up the newspaper and make a pretence of reading. On the days he had Claudia for company, whether in her garden, being pushed for a walk to the Boatman’s Arms or playing Monopoly in the warm room his spirits were lifted and he forgot his frustrations.
That was part of the reason for Kathie’s troubled conscience. The other part was less complicated but just as hard to bear. Bruce’s visits were rare; sometimes he would look in on Saturdays on the pretence of seeing that the boys were helping; sometimes he would just ‘happen to pass’ the gate and drop in to have a few words with Den as he did around teatime on a Saturday in early December. Like Kathie, he too was troubled by conscience even though for weeks they had had no time alone. He had enormous sympathy for Den, a man who had gone to war leaving a wife and daughter and the happiness that had been so apparent at Westways, only to return crippled, with no daughter and a wife who had moved on from their old life just as surely as he had himself. How was it that Bruce was so certain Kathie and Den hadn’t slotted back to the way things used to be, ‘two sides of the same coin’? It was a question he didn’t ask himself, for he only had to be in the same room with her to be aware that for her, as for him, what they felt had been no midsummer madness.
‘How are you getting on with this year’s party from the school, Kathie?’ he asked her on that December Saturday.
‘They’re great. Clive got the mechanical digger out this morning and worked with it. It’s heavy work, but he’s as strong as an adult.’
Bruce nodded. ‘Clive Dunster. He’s head boy, you know. I have great hopes for Clive, he’s a bright lad. He came to me when he was six, the youngest boarder I’d had. Now he’s just eighteen. I trust by the time he comes out of university this wretched war will be over.’
His eyes met Kathie’s, both of them thinking along the same lines: the war over, evacuees sent home, Brockleigh gone from the Hall.
Dennis shrugged his shoulders. ‘Bloody war!’
‘I must go. Young Marley was in the garden with Beth, I believe. I’ll take him back with me, it’ll be getting dark soon. Don’t bother to see me out, Kathie, I’ll use the back door and collect Marley.’
‘I expect he’s helping her with the chickens.’
They dreaded Christmas, always a time for heightened emotions. No Jess, Den so changed and with his resenting Beth’s presence even more than for the rest of the year. Under Claudia’s casually cheerful manner lurked a spirit more sensitive than she was prepared to show, and it was she who suggested they should spend the day with her.
‘I expect I’m being selfish,’ she chuckled, ‘but I’ve ordered a turkey and I haven’t a clue what I have to do with it. Will it come with its clothes on? It won’t, will it? If you’re there you can tell me what to do, Kathie. Please come. Bruce has promised to help me pretty the place up, I bought lots of sparkly bits when I was in Exeter.’
They agreed with no hesitation. Like Kathie and Dennis, Beth had been dreading the festival. Mr H could make everyone feel miserable without even saying a word. But if they all went to Ollie’s house, and nice Mr Meredith too, it would be new and different, not like last year when they’d gone to the common to cut the holly and she had learnt about the spirit of Christmas.
Good times and bad, they all pass. Somehow they lived through that first year without Jess. Claudia had a piano but no great expertise as a pianist, so she persuaded Bruce to accompany their sing-song. Surprisingly she had quite a lot of sheet music, well known songs, some old and some new. She led the singing, performing with no more skill than she had in the repertory company but looking even lovelier than she had in those days ten years earlier. They played games, charades being the children’s favourite, and somehow the day melted into history. At Claudia’s suggestion, Beth stayed the night so that the others didn’t have anything to hurry home for and when at last they left it was already Boxing Day. Bruce pushed the wheelchair and insisted on coming right along the lane to Westways before, by the light of the moon, he managed to see to undo the padlock, then with his pocket torch aimed at the ground, make his way through the wood and back to school.
After four months at home Den had become more independent and managed the stairs in half the time he had originally. Once he was in bed, Kathie pulled back the curtains and opened the window, then climbed in by his side.
‘Didn’t she do well?’ she said in little more than a whisper, the effect of the silence of night. Her words carried an unspoken message. Somehow they had got through the day without Jess. The pain never got any less, and neither could they talk to each other about her.
Lying on his back Den put his arm around her, easing her towards him. She recognized that he was unsettled and read the message in his action. Tonight she had wanted to lie awake in the isolation of the dark bedroom. She wanted to remember every moment of the hours that had gone, the brief exchanged glances, the surprise of Bruce’s ability on the piano. She wanted her mind to reach out to his, for he would be thinking of her just as she was of him, of that she was sure. Instead she raised herself to lie on Den, answering his need of her. Then, just as he wanted, she drew her knees up and sat straighter, so that she could guide him. Bruce, Bruce, she cried silently as she moved slowly and firmly, forcing Den deeper into her, I want this to be you, nearer, deeper, you, you. She kept her eyes closed cutting her off from everything but her dream of being one with Bruce.
‘Quicker, Kathie, quicker, yes, yes, aahhh . . .’ It was over, her illusion gone. Duty done, she climbed off him and lay down by his side. Dear Dennis, consciously she brought the thought to the top of her mind. She had never felt so full of self-contempt, nor yet so frightened of the future.
So the days went on. Kathie told herself she was a realist, and if when she looked into the future she could see no shape, no hope, then it had to be up to her to set the scene. Work was her salvation and in the early weeks of the year she threw herself into it wholeheartedly. Perhaps that was what made her so blind.
It was a day during the Easter school holiday when, working with her seedlings in the greenhouse (surely Den could have done this, some evil spirit whispered to her) she heard an unfamiliar sound. Raising her head she listened again. Beth and Ollie were at the Hall where Bruce had given them permission to play during the school break. Anyway, this wasn’t a child’s cry, it was a woman, a woman who was being swept along on a tide of despair.
Following the sound, Kathie found the girls at the far end of the field. Sally was sitting on the stile, bent forward so that her head was almost on her knees, her
whole body twitching and shaking as she pressed her clenched fists against her face as if that way she could force her out-of-control outburst into silence. In front of her knelt Sarah, and whatever it was she was saying was lost to Kathie who could hear nothing above the wild hysteria. Glancing helplessly at Sarah, she too dropped to her knees pulling the shaking body into her arms.
‘Whatever is it, Sally? Nothing can be that bad. Come on, love, tell me. Whatever it is, we’ll sort it out.’
‘Can’t sort it out. Oh Mrs H, I don’t knows what to do. Mum’s found out. And I can’t do what they say. I won’t!’
To Kathie it made no sense. ‘Start from the beginning, Sally.’
Making a huge effort and accompanied by spasmodic snorts and gulps, and a quick glance at Sarah who nodded her silent reply, Sally began at the beginning.
‘Right from the first Saturday he worked here, Clive and I have been going out when he’s free. Lately it’s been more that just “going out”. It just seemed to happen, Mrs H. When we were walking ages ago, back in the autumn it was, we found an old barn on the lane going down to the river. There was never anyone there, no tools in it or animals or anything, just a pile of old straw. We went in to shelter when it suddenly rained. Then when the days got colder that’s where we went. It was sort of our place. We just talked most of the time. You don’t really know him, Mrs H, but if you could hear him, the things he believes, the things he means to do with his life, then you’d understand. I’d never talked to anyone like him. I hated the Christmas holidays when he wasn’t at the Hall and he said he felt just the same.’
‘You fell in love with him. And does he feel the same about you?’ But they were hardly more than children. And what would this sort of trouble do to his school leaving exams?
‘Yes, yes of course he does. That’s how it all happened. Mum’s been watching me, then yesterday she asked me straight out why I was late, if I’d been doing anything I shouldn’t.’ It was hard to understand her words as her crying took control again. ‘What we did was right, it wasn’t dirty and beastly like they said. Called me a whore, a child of Satan, and Clive too. Said I had to go away till my baby gets born – they’ll tell lies that I’ve got a job somewhere – then I have to have it adopted. I won’t! It’s mine and Clive’s.’
