A Summer Promise (11 page)

‘Haven’t got ’em,’ Maddy said bluntly. ‘And until you let me collect your pension – and you know I can, now that you and Dr Carlton have signed your book – there won’t be any. So you’d best make up your mind really fast, otherwise the O’Hallorans won’t just think you’re a liar; they’ll know you are.’

Gran made an angry noise like a cat growling. ‘All right, all right; you’ve had your laugh,’ she said bitterly. ‘You may take yourself off with
my
pension book tomorrow morning, and buy whatever we need for a bake.’

A week later the O’Hallorans moved into Larkspur Farm, and for the next few days Maddy was fully occupied with settling them in and explaining what Gran could not do, how much she could do, and how much she thought she could do. However, she did manage one hasty trip over to the Hall, only to find neither Tom nor Alice present, though Mr Browning assured her that they had only walked into the village and would be back soon enough. Maddy and Mr Browning were in the immaculate stable yard, Mr Browning in the overalls which he wore when he was not about to drive his employers somewhere. Looking a little self-conscious, he cleared his throat and cocked an eyebrow at Maddy. ‘My son tells me that you and your gran are employing a couple of migrant workers to give a hand. Tom says you’re lodging them free in return for work, which I must say the old place could do with. Last time I passed, I saw the yard alone was waist-high in weeds. I enjoy gardening, and it wouldn’t take myself and your new chap more than a couple of hours to clear it. It’d make life a lot easier for your hens and geese when they forage for the corn you throw out of an evening.’

‘Oh, thank you. What a kind offer. But I’m afraid we couldn’t afford . . .’ Maddy began, only to be interrupted.

‘Did I say anything about payment? Mr Thwaite pays me a pretty good wage, but to tell you the truth I don’t have enough to occupy me and I’d be glad of a chance to meet your new worker.’

Maddy had begun to say that it was early days yet but she was sure Mr O’Halloran was equal to the task of clearing the farmyard when something occurred to her. Mr Browning was lonely! Doubtless he had been too busy to meet many locals since he and Tom had moved to Windhover. So she smiled at him, and said that the O’Hallorans would doubtless welcome Mr Browning’s help once they had settled in. The chauffeur nodded; clearly this was a man who could take a hint. ‘I’ll give it a couple of weeks and then come calling,’ he said. ‘There’s a nice little pub in the village called the Craven Heifer; we might toddle down there and have a drink together.’

‘I’m sure Mr O’Halloran would like that,’ Maddy said politely, preparing to take her leave. ‘Tell Tom and Alice I called, would you?’

The baking day to which Gran had referred did not occur until the O’Hallorans had been at the farm for a few days, and was only a moderate success. Mrs O’Halloran looked doubtfully at the ingredients which Maddy had set out on the big kitchen table and then spoke apologetically. ‘Sure and I never made a loaf like that in me life. I t’ought, when you axed me if I knew how to bake bread, that you meant sody bread.’ She flicked the pot of yeast with a disdainful finger. ‘We don’t use yeast to make sody bread; don’t need it. And ’tis better for the digestion, so it is.’

Eager to please, Maddy would have let their new worker make her soda bread, but Gran was made of sterner stuff. ‘We don’t want no slapdash ways here,’ she said firmly. ‘A good loaf of bread is easy to make once you know how. Oh, I know it’s an all day job because the loaves have to be proved, but at the end of it you’ll have bread for a week and still as sweet and fresh on a Sunday as it were the previous Monday.’ She assumed the attitude of someone tottering on the brink of the grave. ‘I thought you were going to do the bake for me, with just the odd bit of advice, but it looks as though I’ll have to roll my sleeves up and give you a demonstration.’

‘Oh, there’s no need,’ Mrs O’Halloran said quickly. ‘A fast learner, I am. Tell me what to do and I’ll do it . . .’ she smiled at Maddy, ‘and sure won’t you be having yourself the best loaves of bread in the whole of Yorkshire.’

But this Gran would not allow. ‘It won’t be Yorkshire bread if it’s made by a perishin’ Irish flibbertigibbet,’ she muttered, heaving herself out of her chair and going over to the kitchen table. ‘Stand clear,’ she said irritably. ‘And watch what I do and do the same yourself. Maddy, divide the ingredients into two piles. Fetch me a jug of water from the pump in the yard – I want it fresh, not standing. And when we’ve baked the loaves we’ll see who makes the best bread.’

Mrs O’Halloran sighed deeply and then turned and winked at Maddy. ‘’Tis idle to pretend I’ve ever baked bread in me life, but I still say sody bread’s the nicest,’ she whispered. ‘The old lady’s a tartar, but ’tis clear she’ll teach me, whether I like it or no. Ah well, ’tis always hard when a body starts a new job, but as I say, ’tis a quick learner I am and I reckon I’ll soon get into the way of it.’

‘I’m sure you will,’ Maddy said, with a confidence she was far from feeling. She had tried to make bread under Gran’s tuition before; her loaf had been soggy in the middle and since then Gran had barred her from the kitchen on baking days, so now she watched closely while the Irish woman kneaded and punched and manhandled the dough before dividing it between the tins and placing them in the hearth so that they might prove in the warmth from the stove.

That done, Mrs O’Halloran stepped back, shooting a triumphant glance at Gran; too soon, as it turned out. ‘Now we’ll make a family fruitcake and an egg custard for our dinners,’ Gran said briskly as her helper turned away from the stove. ‘Off with you, Maddy; I dare say there’s a hundred things you ought to be doing, and you can safely leave Mrs O’Halloran and myself to finish off the bake.’

Maddy was glad to go, for her time of freedom was growing short. At first she had been quite happy to concentrate all her spare time on the O’Hallorans, but she very soon realised that she and Gran, thanks to Dr Carlton, had fallen on their feet. Although Gran ruffled up like an indignant turkeycock when Mrs O’Halloran offered to dress her, there was little else which the old lady did not expect her helper to do. The kitchen garden, however, remained Maddy’s pride and joy, but when she headed there now, meaning to pick some runner beans, she found Mr O’Halloran at work with a will, double-digging the uncultivated half. As Maddy approached him he leaned on his spade, wiping the sweat from his forehead with a large red and white spotted handkerchief. ‘Mornin’, miss, and ain’t it a grand one?’

Maddy agreed. ‘I’ve come to get some beans,’ she told him. ‘I didn’t expect to find you here, Mr O’Halloran.’

The man cocked an eyebrow. ‘Ah, by the time you’ve been in your new school a week I’ll have the whole place nicely dug over for when the frosts come. There’s nothing like a good frost to break down heavy soil. And me next job were to ask if I can have some of that manure heap in the corner of the pasture. It’s the best grub for improvin’ the soil. Sad it is that we can’t plant the whole area with spuds, but they should have been in by Easter, or April at the latest, so’s the haulms would have swelled in the soil by the time we’d want to harvest them.’ He grinned at her and she thought, suddenly, that it was a pixie grin, full of mischief. In fact, Maddy realised, he reminded her of an illustration in Miss Parrott’s big fairy book of a little man sitting on a spotted toadstool, in a magic wood. She must have smiled involuntarily as the thought entered her head, for Mr O’Halloran raised his brows. ‘You agree that to put down the land to spuds would enrich the soil? Value your opinion I would, for you’ve kept this garden as well or better’n any man could; we both love the land so we’ll get along fine, so we will. When does school start?’

‘In a few days,’ Maddy said briefly. ‘I’ll pick some beans and take them to your wife in the kitchen, and then I think I’ll nip over to Windhover Hall to see my friend Alice. She’s starting at the school at the same time as me.’

However, a shock awaited her at the Hall. Alice had been engaged in arranging her brand new books in a smart leather satchel, but when Maddy was ushered into her sitting room by a smiling maidservant she jumped up from the window seat. ‘Let’s walk into the village; I need a pencil sharpener,’ she said, then giggled. ‘With all the things my aunt and uncle said I would need – a beautiful fountain pen, a geometry set, and all kinds of pencils – no one thought of a tiddly little thing like a pencil sharpener.’ She tucked her hand into Maddy’s arm. ‘Do
you
want a pencil sharpener? They don’t cost much, and Tom says they’re important, so we’d best get one each.’

‘I’ve got one already, thank you very much,’ Maddy said loftily. She indicated the numerous objects which Alice had spread out on a small table. ‘Gosh, if you try to take that lot to school the weight will break your shoulder!’

Alice’s soft brows shot up towards her hairline. She was wearing one of her smart summer frocks, pale green cotton with matching sandals, and looking even prettier, Maddy thought, than she usually did. ‘Break my shoulder? What makes you think I’ll be carrying it myself? It’ll be Browning’s job to carry it until we reach my classroom . . . I expect he’ll carry yours as well, if you ask him.’

Maddy frowned. ‘What on earth makes you think
Mr
Browning will be anywhere near the school? You’d better explain.’

As she spoke both girls had been crossing the hall and now Alice stopped by the coat-stand and took down her jacket, taking it for granted that Maddy would help her into it. ‘Well, of course Uncle John’s chauffeur will drive us to and from school,’ she said impatiently. ‘How did you think we would get there?’

Maddy felt annoyance well up within her. Alice behaved as if she, Maddy, were just another servant, standing by to help her into her coat and possibly even to hold the door for her, and now she was actually daring to sound put out. ‘Are you listening?’ Alice demanded. ‘Browning will be taking us to school. Uncle John says we must leave early because it’s a good drive from here, but Browning doesn’t mind. Tom says his father often grumbles that he doesn’t have enough to do, so ferrying us to and from school will fill in his time.’

‘Ferrying
you
to and from school, you mean,’ Maddy corrected her hotly. ‘I’d rather go on the bus.’

‘Oh!’ Alice said blankly. ‘If you insist . . . but surely you’ll let Browning take you into the village? And back again after school, of course? Oh, do think again, dear Maddy. Think of the winter when the snow’s a foot deep and the backs of your legs get covered in chilblains!’

Maddy knew Alice had a point; it would be madness to refuse the offered ride into town when the weather was truly awful. But other girls and boys didn’t have a Mr Browning, and they managed to get to school in all but the very worst weather. Come to that, there was no guarantee that the car would get through when the weather was really bad. In fact they probably stood as good a chance, or better, on the bus than in the Daimler, so despite Alice’s pleading eyes Maddy refused to capitulate.

‘I don’t want to be different,’ she said obstinately. ‘I shouldn’t have thought you’d want to be either. And honestly, Alice, we don’t know a soul – apart from each other – who’s starting at St Philippa’s when we do. Wouldn’t it be easier to go in on the bus with lots of other girls?’

‘Well, maybe,’ Alice said after a considerable pause. ‘But Tom thinks we should go with his father and Tom’s usually right.’ She had been looking thoughtful but now she turned a hopeful face towards her friend. ‘Tell you what, we’ll get Brow— I mean Mr Browning to take us to the village really early, then when the bus arrives we’ll be first aboard and can be sure to sit together. Will you agree to that?’

Maddy was tempted, but she knew Alice’s wheedling ways. All it needed was a day of rain or high winds and Alice would insist that they go all the way to school with Mr Browning, and it would be difficult to change her mind. She temporised. ‘Tell you what, Alice, we’ll let Mr Browning take us to the bus stop for the first week, and the second week we’ll go all the way by car and then decide. Will that satisfy you?’

After some thought Alice said, rather grudgingly, that she supposed Maddy must have her way as usual, a remark which was to say the least somewhat unfair, for Alice took it for granted that she should have her way over most things. However, it turned out that both Gran and the O’Hallorans thought Maddy was mad to turn down the offer of a ride in the Daimler, so for the time being Maddy held her peace. She was pretty sure that if Alice enjoyed the bus ride and made a few friends on their journeyings she would probably agree to travel by bus for the rest of the term.

On the first day of school Maddy got up while it was still dark. She dressed with special care, plaited her long, light brown hair into two shining braids, and reminded herself that she needed a couple of oatcakes and a chunk of cheese for her elevenses. But early though she was, when she went down to the kitchen she found that Mrs O’Halloran had already cooked the porridge and made a pot of tea, and when Maddy greeted her she indicated a small package, done up in greaseproof paper, on the end of the table nearest the door. ‘I t’ought you’d be wantin’ a mouthful come break-time,’ she said rather awkwardly in response to Maddy’s delighted thanks. ‘And I know your gran wouldn’t have you goin’ off wit’ only a jam sandwich betwixt you an’ starvation, so get outside of that porridge quick, ’cos you don’t want to be late on your first day.’

Two minutes later, porridge eaten and tea drunk, Maddy was putting on her brand new blazer. She had thanked Mrs O’Halloran profusely for getting up so early, but assured her that it had not been necessary. ‘I’m used to early rising, and in fact I like it,’ she said. ‘It’s awfully nice to have company, but don’t feel you have to do this every morning.’

The older woman smiled. ‘You aren’t the only one what enjoys early risin’, me darlin’,’ she said. ‘This way, by the time the sun comes up I’ll be at work in the house or the garden. Off wit’ you now.’

Maddy opened the back door and sniffed the wonderful country smell, a mixture of the sheep on the hillside and the rich September grass, with the added little chill of the mist in which the sheep stood, their fleeces steaming as the day warmed. She set off at a smart pace towards the lane where she was to meet the car, but when she reached it she was rather surprised not to hear the purr of the Daimler’s engine. She frowned. Surely she had not got the arrangements wrong? She and Alice had agreed that Mr Browning would pick her up first and then return to the Hall to collect Alice on the way down to the village, which would give Alice a good twenty minutes’ extra time in bed. But there was no car gliding along the lane, so Maddy was forced to conclude that something had gone wrong and she must make her own way to the bus stop.