Dark Harvest (11 page)

‘Yes, but I have another.’

‘You’re going to ask me why I do it?’

It was Caroline’s turn for anger. ‘Now you’re underestimating me. Oh, Felicia, are we so driven apart by war?’

Appalled, Felicia took her hands. ‘You’re right. We mustn’t let it divide us. It can so easily happen.’

So easily. Was that what was happening between her and Reggie? Now it was happening with Felicia too, and she realised it was up to her to bridge the gap between them. ‘What is it like?’ she asked. ‘Please tell me.’

Felicia took a deep breath. ‘It’s a new kind of war, Caroline. War has always been terrible, but this is an apocalypse. Men with blue
faces, gasping out their lungs for the breath to live, the smell of gas gangrene, bits of bodies lying like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, blood and pain everywhere. On the field, in the ambulances, in the aid posts, doing your best to give first aid to dying men, seeing others fighting to live. It’s all pain, Caroline,
pain.
’

Caroline was silent for a moment, then said urgently: ‘You mustn’t leave us, Felicia. Not in your heart at any rate.’

‘I’ll try. Sometimes though, out there, the heart has to be sealed off in order to survive.’

‘You mentioned the hat I gave you.’ Simon steered Tilly round a couple who were dancing ragtime rather too energetically.

‘Certainly. I am known to the troops as the Lady of the Blue Hat.’

‘I’d rather offer you greater protection.’

‘Simon!’ There was a warning note in Tilly’s voice.

‘I suppose,’ he continued, ‘if I kissed you—not here of course, but perhaps discreetly behind a palm tree—you would refuse to speak to me again?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then I won’t. Instead you will lunch with me tomorrow. There’s a little restaurant I know in Soho, where Mama does the cooking, and Papa serves it. I am known to them as
il signore degli
ravioli,
owing to my fondness for the dish. We shall forget we are peers of this realm and cogs in the effort to win a war, and become a man
and a woman. You will be called
la signora del
gelato.
’

‘Gelato?’

‘Ice cream. Hard outside but given time, will melt.’

Tilly hesitated.

‘Are you evading my bombardment?’

‘Does it matter? You seem to be an expert in trench warfare.’

He laughed. ‘My expertise lies in the timing of the offensive.’

‘Suppose the enemy has crept away in the meantime?’

‘She won’t.’

‘You’re very sure of yourself.’

‘Ah.’ His hand held hers a little tighter. ‘One of the many advantages of maturity.’

Mrs Manning had passed Father’s test; Phoebe was permitted to work in the recreation hut on condition that she conduct herself like a lady. Seated beside Private Harry Darling in the darkened cinema, she wondered both at her own daring and whether this was violating her promise. Not only was she out unchaperoned with a private soldier, but she was at a cinema showing an American film,
The Squaw Man,
with Indians and cowboys. Father had forbidden her to go to the Swinford-Browne picture palace
in Ashden but, she consoled herself, he had said nothing about cinemas in Tunbridge Wells.

This was the first film she had ever been to and bore no relation to the old magic lantern shows they had enjoyed when they were young. It was fast and exciting, with a dashing hero played by Dustin Farnum and the music crashing out of the piano louder than had ever been permitted at the Rectory. And because it was about America, it was educational, so Father couldn’t possibly object, even if he knew—which he wasn’t going to.

As she came out into the sunshine afterwards, she blinked, and turned to Private Darling—Harry, as she now called him. ‘I did enjoy that.’

He swelled with pride. ‘I’m glad, miss.’

He’d never stepped out with someone like Miss Lilley before. Come to that, he hadn’t stepped out with anyone much. Miss Lilley had been kind to him, and his mates assured him she was a stunner. He could see that. Full figure and a face like one of those roses he saw in the gardens in Crowborough. The only roses he saw back home grew in Victoria Park and they weren’t like the ones down here in the country, sprawling everywhere like they owned the place. His mates had dared him to ask Miss Lilley out on her afternoon off, and to their surprise he had.

Phoebe was wondering whether he would kiss her. Half of her was enthusiastic at the prospect, the other half, remembering the fright she had had last year, was nervous. This, she reminded
herself, was a soldier; a stranger. It wasn’t like teasing Christopher Denis, Charles Pickering’s predecessor as curate.

Harry did kiss her, but not on her lips, nor even on her cheek—he didn’t dare. He kissed her hand instead.

Phoebe bicycled home, singing ‘You are my honey-honey-suckle’, feeling like a princess, and seeing herself as a beautiful mother to the soldiers. No, not mother, sweetheart. She avoided washing her hand that night, and kissed it against her pillow to recapture her illicit pleasure.

Agnes Thorn hauled herself out of bed to feed Elizabeth. She’d been up six times during the night and now it was time to go downstairs to light the range and the living-room fire, no matter if it was June. Living-room was an odd word for the enormous, bare baronial-type hall in which the old ladies spent their days, but they felt the cold. Jamie must be colder still in the mud of a trench in the front line. She hadn’t heard a word since he left for France with the 7th Sussex at the end of May.

Elizabeth was her delight and her chief concern—the latter because once she had brought her downstairs, she was hardly allowed to see her save to feed her, and even then Miss Charlotte and Miss Emily wanted to watch. It embarrassed her. They were good with the baby and rocked her to sleep, but she couldn’t help noticing that Elizabeth was always ‘our’ baby. It made her uneasy, somehow.

She should be glad, she supposed, for their help in looking after Elizabeth, for she grew very tired. Even though Mary from the village did the cleaning, she was on the go from six to eleven, with hardly a pause, seven days a week. And she was up at nights too. She never had a minute to herself even to visit the village unless she could think of a good excuse to run an errand.

She was lucky, she told herself, to have a roof over her head, and to be earning her own money. Well, not earning—the Miss Norvilles couldn’t afford more than her keep. But at least she had her separation allowance now she was married.

Her only regular escape was on to Tillow Hill to scour the undergrowth and fields for young dandelion leaves, nettles for soup, wild garlic, and anything that could eke out their meagre diet. And all the while Elizabeth Agnes kicked her legs and cooed with her two elderly guardians.

Caroline broke off. It was not easy to think what to say next. She could not ask what he was doing, for he could not, or would not, write much about that. But if she wrote of her own life all the time, she felt callous. She had told him in a previous letter about her move to London, explaining that this way she could oblige his mother by giving up her field work. For the moment, she had added—just in case. ‘Oblige’ Lady Hunney indeed. It was like obliging the Kaiser!

Reggie had not commented in his reply save to say he was glad she was enjoying her new job. She had informed him that she was working for the WSPU war effort, and if he chose to think this was the recruiting side rather than the advancement of women’s role in the war, so much the better. Lady Hunney, she was well aware, was so violently opposed to the suffragist movement, whether militant or not, that it could only do harm to spell out exactly what she was doing.

George was engrossed in a newspaper story of how Flight Sub-Lieutenant Warneford had won his VC shooting down a Zep over Belgium a week ago. He had reached the part where Warneford succeeded in wrestling his Morase Parasol back under control, but had to land to make repairs in enemy territory. How did he get off the ground again with no one to swing the
prop? The chaps at Skinner’s had been talking of little else all week. George still had six months to wait before he could join the Air Force. As soon as he was seventeen, he’d have a shot at it—and tell the Pater afterwards. He worried over how wrong it was to wish the war would continue till Christmas at least, and decided he would add an ‘if’ to his nightly prayer to the Almighty.

His father chose that moment to enter the morning room. ‘Ah, George, have you finished the parish magazine yet?’

George had not.

His father looked at him quizzically. Guilt was written all over his son’s face. ‘Good. I’ve an item for you. A few words about young Jack Hallet. He’s died from typhoid in Gallipoli.’ He paused. ‘So none of your cartoons, George. They would not be appropriate this month.’

‘But my cartoons are serious, Father.’ George was indignant. ‘This one has a shell hole and the Kaiser and Sir John French meeting in it saying—’

‘Not
this month, if you please, George. We must think of the bereaved.’

George slumped in his chair after his father had left. Nothing, but
nothing
to do except swot for Oxford. Who wanted to go to Oxford anyway to study Julius Caesar’s boring campaigns?’ They offered little in comparison with what was going on now. Then he had a brilliant idea and seized his sketch pad, chuckling. Pa couldn’t say this was a war cartoon. Now if he put the Kaiser in a toga …

Dr Beth Parry, clutching her bag, ran to Ashden school after a summons from Philip Ryde. One of the children, Ernie Thorn, had fallen and hurt his leg. When she arrived, Ernie was sitting on the grass supported by Philip, with a crowd of awed children surrounding them. Philip greeted her with relief as Ernie let out a wail.

‘We’ll have it sorted out in no time, young man.’ Beth assessed the way the foot was lying. ‘Can you raise your foot, Ernie? Just a little?’

Ernie tried. Nothing happened. He raised frightened eyes to Dr Parry. ‘We’re going to tuck you up nice and warm, Ernie, even though it’s June. Do you have a blanket, Mr Ryde?’

‘My sister’s out,’ Philip began, ‘otherwise—’

‘I’d like to telephone Ashden Manor Hospital. I think young Ernie has a fracture on the shaft of the leg, and I know Ashden has a new kind of splint—a Thomas splint—specially designed for this type of accident. But they need to apply it here before he’s moved.’

Philip pointed to the telephone on the wall of the entrance hall to his quarters. He fetched the blanket while she made the call.

When they went back outside, however, Len Thorn was standing belligerently over his young cousin. ‘Well, well.’ He swaggered towards Beth, looking her up and down insolently, from the neat black hat to her boots. ‘Our new lady doctor, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Mr Thorn, isn’t it?’ she returned.

‘My Uncle Len,’ Ernie piped up.

‘That’s right, and I’d like to know just what you are doing to this poor little chap.’

‘Looking after his broken leg, Mr Thorn. He needs a special splint and it’s on its way.’

‘One of those street-corner quacks, are you? Or a VAD? Virgins are Dangerous, that’s what I call ’em.’ Len sniggered.

Philip stepped forward. ‘Go home, Len. I won’t have that talk here.’

‘And leave young Ernie with Florence Nightingale?’

‘If you care to consult the British Medical Association—’ Beth’s voice suggested Len might not be capable of reading, ‘you will find I am a fully qualified doctor. You need have no concern for your cousin.’

‘No concern?’ Indignation was written all over Len’s face. ‘It’s you oughta be concerned, Miss Call-Me-Doctor Parry. All our gallant men are in the trenches. What’s going to happen to them when they come home and find women doing their jobs? You tell me that.’

‘I really haven’t the time to tell you anything, Mr Thorn. I’m here to look after Ernie.’

There was a wail from Ernie, who clearly thought it about time he received more attention and another humbug.

‘Piss off, woman,’ Len snarled, swinging a leg to stand astride the child, and hitting the injured limb by mistake. Ernie screamed in agony.

Red with anger, Philip grabbed his arm to frogmarch him from the premises, but a punch in the face from Len’s other hand sent him staggering back: ‘A pity you don’t expend your fighting energy in the trenches, Len,’ Philip retorted.

‘Pity you can’t, Mr Crippled Constable.’ Losing interest in Ernie, Len went out of the gate laughing, just as the motor ambulance arrived, complete with Ashden doctor, a VAD and splint.

It took half an hour to despatch Ernie and notify his parents. When at last they had departed, Philip turned to Beth, who was repacking her bag. ‘I’m sorry you should have been so insulted on school property, Dr Parry.’

‘Len isn’t the first, Mr Ryde. Neither, I fear, will he be the last.’ Beth tried to sound cool, but did not completely succeed.

‘It’s not easy for the villagers. You’re young and unmarried. In a place like Ashden where new ways come slowly, there is bound to be difficulty. May I offer you some tea?’

She hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘I should like that, Mr Ryde. And perhaps,’ she added wryly, ‘I can give you some ointment for the black eye which will doubtless shortly be emerging on my account.’

Isabel was annoyed. Frank Eliot never seemed to be in, and she just had to get the rota organised for July. It was too demeaning to have to walk to the hopgardens to find him, so she compromised. She would call earlier in the evening and catch him as he left the farm to return home. This plan worked well: as she arrived at the front door of the cottage she saw him walking down the track from the hopgardens towards her.

Her heart seemed to flutter, but she tried to
ignore it. He might be attractive but he was no gentleman and she was, after all, a married lady. He had behaved abominably to her on countless occasions and yet, she owned to herself, his face leapt before her in her dreams with far more alacrity than Robert’s ever did.

She would not walk towards him, she would not—but he seemed in no hurry to rush towards her. So she prepared a speech, clutching her notepad in as businesslike a fashion as she could. She watched his feet crunching over the ground; it was less dangerous than watching his face. When should she speak? Now? When he doffed his hat?

She didn’t say anything in the end; and he didn’t bother to doff the panama. He simply removed the notepad from her hand, laid it on the shelf in the porch, put his arms round her and kissed her. Not harshly, not mockingly, but so sweetly she found herself responding. At last he disengaged himself, and stared at her with those strange eyes of his.

‘You’re very beautiful, Isabel. You need to be loved, you need to blossom and flourish like a rose.’

She clung to him, though a tiny part of her was annoyed that he dared to call her by her Christian name. She was a Swinford-Browne.

‘Will you come in, Isabel?’ He stepped indoors and stretched a hand to her.

It was dark in there for the ceilings were low and sunlight did not penetrate.

She swallowed. She wanted very much to go into the house, but the thought of what
Father would say and the fear of crossing that threshold into the unknown held her back. ‘No,’ she finally blurted out.

Frank watched as she left, walking, then breaking into a run. Then he picked up her forgotten notebook and bore it into the house like a trophy.

In bed that night Isabel tossed and turned. If only she could just talk to Frank Eliot, even have him kiss her, but without any danger that he would take liberties like he had in Hop House—or even worse. The thought of the ‘even worse’ sent a thrill down her body. What was she to do?’

Then, in the small hours, when hope of sleep was lost, a brilliant idea came to her: the tennis match.

‘I’m here, Mrs Dibble.’ Caroline ran into the kitchen. ‘I hope there are some sandwiches left for me to make.’

Harriet and Myrtle looked up. All morning they had run back and forth at Mrs Dibble’s command; the slightest objection being met with the retort that it was for the war effort. They couldn’t see the connection.