Dark Harvest

‘The girl I left behind me …’ Matilda Lilley listened to the nonchalant whistling of the young soldier on her right at the ship’s rail, as the steamer drew away from Admiralty Pier. Everyone was leaving behind someone loved. Including her. Tilly allowed herself the rare luxury of heartache and self-doubt.

At Ashden Rectory they would be in the middle of family prayers—if they still kept up the ritual in the midst of war and, knowing her brother Laurence, they would. Gathered beside the breakfast chafing dishes would be her sister-in-law Elizabeth, her nieces dear Felicia and rebellious Phoebe, her young nephew George, the formidable Mrs Dibble, her hands clasped in prayer that the Almighty might continue to accommodate her in her endeavours to keep the Rectory wheels turning, her husband Percy—But why go on? Together they made a whole, the Rectory, despite the fact that two faces were missing: Isabel, now married, and darling Caroline, actually here in Dover, working in a Voluntary Aid Detachment. She had snatched a brief hour with her yesterday. Brief because Caroline had to hurry back for an emergency meeting about the Zeppelin threat, sparked off by the previous night’s long-expected attack on Norfolk, which promised to affect every
man, woman and child in England—even in slumbering Sussex.

What was Ashden making of the Zeppelin threat, Tilly wondered with some amusement, picturing old Jacob Timms pontificating on the seat beneath the oak tree, believing himself comfortably separated from war by sixty years since his service in the Crimea. What would he say if through the darkened skies over the village slithered a silver cigar-shaped monster? She wished she could be there to see it, but she had donned her tin-lined hat and that was that.

‘If I should die …’ Tilly impatiently dismissed Rupert Brooke’s poem which she had read in a magazine last year and which now popped unbidden into her mind. Did she regret her decision? No. Had she any intention of fertilising some corner of a foreign field? She had not. Did those white cliffs, receding into the distance, fill her with sentiment for her homeland? They did not. Was she deserting her comrades-in-arms left behind in England? No. If women were equal to men politically, they should take their share of the dangers. And if that danger, in this cold, rainy January of 1915, meant driving ambulances with the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry from the front line to base hospitals, so be it. She was ‘Miss Lilley’ now; ‘Lady Matilda Lilley’ had vanished along with her past life. But her heart had not vanished with it.

No, her heart remained in Ashden. In Sussex; rail against its imperfections as she might—forever England.

Home at last! Caroline jumped down on to the familiar platform. The wooden canopy of Ashden railway station still had not been repainted. Good! Side by side with Lord Kitchener’s accusing finger pointing out from his recruiting poster, the old advertisement still bravely exhorted the world to come to Hastings for a sunny holiday. One day she’d actually go! The cubby-hole window through which her sister Phoebe served tea for the war effort was shuttered against the early March winds, but Caroline could see the station cat Ruby (she was black and white) asleep as usual on the windowsill of the booking office, and inside she could hear Mr Chappell whistling ‘If you were the only girl in the world’. She sighed with happiness.

The porter, young Arthur Mutter, took her ticket with a murmured word of greeting for the Rector’s daughter.

‘How’s the list, Arthur?’

He was suddenly animated. ‘Saw the old Brighton
Bonchurch
last week, miss.’ To the never ending disgust of his father Harold, one of the two village carriers, Arthur had developed a passion for the railway. Without parental consent he had become a porter, and spent all his free time doggedly travelling the
railways despite the wartime delays.

‘Caroline!’

Her mother, breathless and looking uncharacteristically flustered, hurried into the booking office. Caroline’s pleasure was complete. She found herself runnings almost hurling herself into her mother’s arms, relaxing as she caught a waft of the familiar lavender scent. The mere sight of her mother, the old blue hat crammed over her dark hair, hatpins at all angles, signalled all was right with the world.

‘Where’s the trap? Nothing’s wrongs is it?’ Caroline asked anxiously as she disengaged herself, and straightened the feather in her mother’s hat which she had knocked in her enthusiasm.

Elizabeth Lilley gave her daughter a welcoming pat before taking one of Caroline’s two small suitcases. ‘Nothing. I walked. Poppy is growing more and more cantankerous in her old horsey age. She
is
nineteen. I told her she’d get taken by the Army as so many horses have, if she didn’t prove how indispensable she was, but I’m afraid she still refused to move. Mutter delivered your trunk yesterday, so I knew you wouldn’t be carrying much luggage.’

‘It’s so unusual to see you out walking.’

‘It’s the war,’ her mother said blithely. ‘You’d be amazed how much I’m out nowadays.’

It did amaze her. In Caroline’s imagination her mother dwelt within the red walls of the Rectory garden; the rambling red brick house was filled with her as by the warm aroma of baking bread. Her mother
was
the Rectory.

‘I see the war hasn’t persuaded you into the new shorter skirts,’ she teased.

‘All in good time, Caroline. It may be the first of March, but it’s still winter and no fit time for my ankles to appear on the world stage.’

Caroline had a sneaking hope that her mother never would adopt modern fashions. Selfishly, she wanted her never to change, for if she did the Rectory itself might change. Her mother’s striking looks and tall, well-built figure suited the flowing length of the pre-war fashions, though she would be the last person to care for such considerations.

The hedgerows were just beginning to show signs of life, Caroline saw with pleasure as she walked down Station Road, and the ploughed fields, earth still clogged with the heavy winter rainfall, gave at least a promise of growth.

‘How’s Isabel?’ Caroline asked, as they passed the track which led to Hop House. Her elder sister’s letters were full of complaints of how the war had ruined her life; her husband thought more of playing soldiers than of her, and staff were unobtainable—save for the terrible Mrs Bugle. Caroline, irritated, nevertheless felt sorry for her; despite the fact that Isabel had been only too eager to leap into matrimony with Robert, the son of Ashden’s wealthy brewer and hopgrower William Swinford-Browne; it was a hard fate then to find herself left alone as a young bride after the noisy family life of the Rectory. Though not, Caroline reminded herself, nearly as hard a fate as many young wives were experiencing.

‘Coping wonderfully,’ Elizabeth replied airily.

Caroline laughed. ‘I’ll soon find out, anyway. I’ll invite myself to Hop House for supper.’

‘I shouldn’t if I were you. Isabel’s cook is so bad, Isabel might cook it herself—and she’s worse.’ Elizabeth nodded to Tom Cooper sitting in the doorway of his almshouse and he waved his cap at them. ‘Anyway, you’ll see Isabel tonight at Rectory dinner.’

‘Morning, Miss Caroline.’

Tom’s greeting was as casual as if he saw her every day. True, she had been here at Christmas, and indeed had only left Ashden for the first time last September after the outbreak of war, but to Caroline it seemed a lifetime. While she had been away, Ashden had become an imaginary village that rose up occasionally in her conscious mind, before sinking again, submerged by the frightfulness of a war whose results she had to deal with every day in Dover. Now that she was back in Ashden it was hard to believe it was real. Until, that is, they passed the monstrous picture palace built a few months ago by Swinford-Browne. A black and white timber edifice boasting towers and even crenellations, right in the centre of Ashden, it immediately drew the eye from the village’s mellow red-brick beauty and the weathered grey stone of St Nicholas, her father’s church. The picture palace stood arrogantly on the corner of Station Road and the rise of Bankside, and she did her best to ignore it. She looked beyond it to the pond at the foot of the grassy slope leading down from Bankside. To the right she could
see Timms the newsagent, the post office, the general stores and Bertram the butcher’s.

She forced herself to look straight ahead to the track by the side of St Nicholas that led to the gates of the Manor, now a hospital for the wounded. Then, her heart leaping with sudden pleasure, she caught her first sight of the Rectory, its white gates open as always. In the front garden a brave daffodil or two was already in flower, dotting the grass. Caroline ran into the Rectory drive. Once inside the gates she executed a neat little hornpipe of joy on the gravel and made for the tradesmen’s door, her favourite entrance, since it took her straight into the kitchen. Mrs Dibble had her back to her. Intent on punishing pastry at the oak table, she was loudly singing ‘Soldiers of the Cross Arise’ in honour of the season. Caroline’s hand stole round her to steal some sultanas. Mrs Dibble jumped and pushed the hand away. ‘It’s Lent, Miss Caroline, even if you are a nurse now.’

‘I’m not.’ She munched away. ‘I drive ambulances and make tea. How are Mr Dibble, and Lizzie and Joe? And Fred, of course,’ she added quickly. Not that Fred was ever likely to be different. He managed a few jobs in the Rectory, like lighting and filling the oil lamps and chopping wood for the boiler, but mostly he pursued his amiable way in his garden workshop.

‘Muriel’s had the little one last week, a girl, Josephine.’ Mrs Dibble glowed with pride. ‘Joe will be pleased as punch when he gets back.’ There was a brave defiance in the ‘when’. Joe
was a Territorial with the 5th Sussex. ‘Left for France, he did, just a week before she was born.’ The words were cheerful enough, but her eyes told a different story.

‘Have you heard from him?’

‘Not yet. Still, hunger’s the best sauce, that’s what they do say. Talking of which, there’s the carrots to peel.’

Caroline fled.

‘Have you heard from him?’ What a stupid question. Caroline knew the answer was probably no. Her last letter from Reggie had arrived yesterday, yet was written ten days earlier. Then, he said, he was kicking his heels with nothing to do. By now he could be in the midst of battle, wounded even—no, she must not think that way. There was little enough that women were allowed to do in this war; what they could do was keep strong hearts for those they loved who were far away. Her fiancé Reggie Hunney was a second lieutenant with the 2nd Royal Sussex, fighting on the Western Front. At Christmas he had been near a town called Ypres in Belgium, but now she suspected the battalion had moved. The need for self-censorship by officers and imposed censorship on the troops made it hard for those at home.

She had last seen him at Christmas. It had been easy to be strong then, surrounded by loved ones, but it was more difficult in the bleak winter evenings that followed. Listening to the waves crashing on Dover beach and the rain, the endless rains of January, lashing at the windows
of her hostel bedroom, how could she help but worry over what was happening to Reggie? Mud, Reggie had written, was fighting on the German side, by which she gathered that there could be no British offensive till spring. The German trenches, he had told her, were much better dug and equipped than the British, which were often taken over from those hastily prepared by the French, designed for immediate cover, not the permanent occupation which, since the disaster of Ypres in November, he gloomily predicted. Then he had seen her face, remembered to whom he was talking, and made an effort to be cheerful. Why should he though, she reasoned. He needed a listener, and who better than she? At least, with her VAD experience, she had some conception of what war meant, with the hospital ships arriving constantly all through that autumn and winter. How Reggie must have suffered in the rain of this long winter, but spring was surely about to come.

In Ashdown Forest, which lay a mile or so from the Rectory, the ferns would be stirring, waiting to unfurl pale fronds hidden beneath the dead bracken of last year. Spring usually brought hope. This year it brought the probability of a new British assault, and with it the hope that this would be a prelude to winning the war. But it would mean more casualties, more heartbreak.

She knocked on the study door, not expecting her father to be there, for this was usually his parish visiting time. It opened even as she knocked. Laurence Lilley had heard her voice,
and had been waiting patiently till she came to find him. Of all his five children, Caroline was secretly the most dear to him.

‘How long for, Caroline?’ He kissed her, drew her in, sat her down, and then quietly asked this all-important question.

‘I don’t know, Father.’

‘Were you not satisfied as a VAD? It is valuable work.’

Caroline produced her prepared answer. ‘My six-month contract has ended, and I didn’t like your having to pay for me to live away from home.’ This was true. It had always worried her that she was unpaid as a VAD; she felt she should contribute to the stretched resources of the Rectory.

‘I thought it had just been agreed that VADs should receive a small salary.’

Her heart sank. She had been banking on him not having heard the news. With a salary of twenty pounds a year, she could live away from home perfectly well, even though the cost of living was shooting up.

‘You’re not disappointed I’m home?’

‘Do you see it as a failure on your part?’

‘No!’ she burst out. ‘It’s just that I’m not a very good VAD. Lots of people could do the job as well as I do, and probably better. I don’t know quite what I should do. But I
shall
do something.’

‘So if you are sure your feet are still on the path God has chosen for you, and that you have not—’

‘Ambled into the forest?’ she finished for him,
remembering the theme of many sermons. A track led from their orchard down to one of the gates into Ashdown Forest. As a child she had pictured being lost amid the heaths and woods of the forest, wandering through the green glades—delightful until one grew hungry. ‘Oh yes, I am sure. Perhaps I
should
go to the front like Aunt Tilly and Felicia.’ Her aunt had transformed herself from militant suffragette to determined war worker and was driving ambulances, and her younger sister was preparing to join her very shortly. Her father remained silent. ‘You don’t want me to, do you, any more than Reggie does?’ She had given Reggie her promise that she would stay in England, however much she disagreed with his reasoning.

‘I admit I’d be relieved if God decided no more of my daughters should feel called to the front.’

‘And what about George?’ Her brother was the youngest of the family, but he was sixteen.

‘I don’t know, Caroline.’ She saw the sudden anxiety on his face, and was sorry she had spoken. ‘He is a man, after all. That makes a difference. I can only pray for the war to end quickly.’

‘What
difference
?’ she asked gently. ‘I know women are still confined to looking after the men—cooking, cleaning, nursing, comforting and so on. I know they’re essential, but there’s so much else we could do as well. We could step into many of the jobs that men do now and release enough manpower to overwhelm the
enemy. Why doesn’t the government see that?’

‘Governments move slowly because public opinion moves slowly,’ he answered her. ‘Besides, you are wrong. Wives are taking over running their husbands’ shops. I even heard of a lady becoming a window-cleaner in Tunbridge Wells. Soon you too may be a wife, and you’ll have Reggie’s job to consider.’

Before the war Reggie had run the Manor estate for his father, who had been occupied in London much of the time in the War Office. Now Sir John was away permanently, except for sporadic short visits, and the estate had to struggle on as best it could with a manager.

‘You sound like Lady Hunney.’ Caroline tried to joke. ‘I’d meddle in the estate over her dead body, I fear.’

‘And she is all too much alive. Living in the Dower House has done little to diminish her presence.’

‘I’ll have to go and see her,’ Caroline said dismally. But
tomorrow!

When she had gone, Laurence sat for a while, unable to return to the correspondence that only half an hour ago had seemed so vital, as he wrestled with something that he acknowledged at last to be fear. While only one of his five children, and the least likely one at that, had chosen to go abroad, it had been bearable. When the war was over, Felicia would return and normal life would come back to the Rectory. And to Ashden.

He saw his role in this war as twofold: firstly, the need to keep abreast of his parishioners’
troubles. With the squire away in London and unable to play his part, it grew more and more difficult. There was Mrs Hubble who hadn’t been right in the head since young Timothy’s death at Ypres; Mrs Tilbury the younger, facing eviction by Swinford-Browne now Paul was called up; and always, always the Mutter-Thorn feud. On the outbreak of war the hatchet had been temporarily buried, but last week a Thorn had accused a Mutter of spying by signalling to the enemy. Joe Ifield, the village policeman, bound to take ‘official’ notice, had come to him for a solution. It had taken time to discover that Mrs Mutter had left her blinds undrawn by mistake a week earlier, and to diffuse the incident by suggesting Joe issue an ‘official’ reprimand. If Ashden battled thus, what hope for peace in Europe?