Orphans of War (53 page)

Maddy kept darting in and out of the house like a child, admiring the Christmas decorations in the hall, the festive banners, reading cards pinned up that they’d opened. The tree had been left for them to decorate together later. The box of decorations was all prepared, each bauble with its own story of who bought it or made it. It was a beloved tradition that neither of them wanted to miss.

Steve said that he’d break the news for her, but Plum insisted they both do it. Just as he was about to start, the phone rang and he was called out to a difficult birth on a farm up the Dale.

‘Maddy, I’ve got some news. I’m not sure how to say this.’

‘You’re not ill, are you?’ Maddy looked apprehensive.

‘No, not at all. It’s just that Steve’s got a new opportunity, a wonderful chance,’ Plum gulped.

‘That’s great. He’s a good doctor. He’s taking another practice?’

‘No, in a hospital clinic, but it’s in New Zealand…working with a friend he met in the war. They always promised they’d work together. You know he was in the Battle for Crete. They evaded capture with the help of these New Zealanders. They’ve kept in touch. He owes them his life and now he feels…’

She saw Maddy’s face crumple. ‘New Zealand! But it’s the other side of the world!’

‘I know, dear, but it’s what he’s always wanted.’

‘So you must go with him, of course, but it’s so far away, by ship.’

‘Yes, but there are flights. I’ll stay on until everything is sorted out. They’ve got a replacement in the practice here so he’ll leave in the New Year and I’ll follow, but not for ages yet.’

‘How long?’

‘I hope to leave at the end of March. We can find someone to help run the guesthouse. That’s why you must speak to Barney. I’m sorry to land you right in it.’ Plum reached out for her hand.

‘Not half! I can’t believe it. Oh, Plum, just when I thought everything was settled,’ she replied, looking so woebegone.

‘I’m sorry. Nothing ever stays the same, does it? I have to go. Finding Steve has been the best thing in my life–a little late perhaps, but I want to help him all I can,’ Plum continued. Her face was alive with love and concern.

‘Forget what I said, I’m only being selfish. You’re
the only family I’ve got and it’s hard to think of you being so far away. It’s such a shock.’ Maddy was trying not to cry.

‘I know we’ve not seen each other for ages, Maddy, not since our wedding, but we can write to each other,’ Plum replied.

‘It’s not the same, though, is it? I wish I hadn’t stayed away so long…’

‘You had your reasons, but no door shuts without another opening. I’ve always believed that. Look at how you all filled my life, you and the evacuees, when things were dire with Gerry. It was the making of me.’

‘I was sorry to hear Uncle Gerald died so suddenly and, just like his mother, with a stroke. I should have gone to his funeral but I was abroad at the time.’

‘Steve and I went out of respect for times past. Gerald was the last of the Belfield brothers; the only one to die in peacetime. End of an era,’ Plum sighed. ‘We met Daisy Abbott–not a bit like I imagined my rival would be. You know, I think we could’ve been friends…I felt sorry for her. So this is all yours now. I’m sorry to spring this on you but we must make it the best of Christmases. I’m scared too…I’m an old stick-in-the-mud at heart. Making a new life at my age is terrifying.’

‘Oh, Plum, what will I do without you?’ Maddy cried.

‘You’ll manage fine and dandy. Look on this as a great opportunity to sell up and move on yourself, if you want to,’ Plum replied, trying not to blubber.

‘Sell up Brooklyn?’

‘Why, yes. There’s nothing to interest you here, is there?’

‘But this is my home…I can’t sell it. Pleasance would turn in her grave and haunt me.’

‘Well, you’re free to do what you want now, Maddy, you’re a big girl. It’s an expensive item to keep up. It’ll have to pay its way and the Old Vic needs sorting too. You’ll rattle around in here like a pea in a drum. Speak to Barney, he’s got some ideas.’

‘But it’s Christmas–I’m not going to think about any of it until after New Year. I shall take old Monty for a long hack over Simmonds Ridge and chew the cud if the weather holds. Your news takes some swallowing.’

‘I knew you’d see the sense of it. We’re going carol singing tonight with the choir and there’s the school Nativity play tomorrow night. We’ll do some last-minute shopping and get squiffy on damson gin. How’s that for starters? If it’s going to be our last Christmas here.’

‘No, it’s not…you’ll be back. Brooklyn won’t be Brooklyn without you…you must return. I’m not going to sell it.’

They were both in tears. It was time for Plum to play the trump card. ‘Let’s go and decorate the tree, you always loved doing that.’

The tree smelled of pine needles and ginger in the firelight. Out came all the wartime dough decorations: bells and angels, Santas and glass baubles, the shepherd’s crook filled with long-forgotten chocolate drops, stars painted with glittery paint and tinsel angels, pretty glass lanterns and bells from another era. Neither spoke, but Plum saw the tears trickling down Maddy’s face.

She had been cruel to be kind. Better to spoil her illusions now so they could get on with their new lives and new plans and really enjoy Christmas together without any secrets.

Maddy had chosen to return just when Plum was choosing a new life and she had no regrets about leaving with Steve. The girl was a woman, old enough to have lovers and admirers. She’d done her job, seen the girl right in dark times. Christmas brought out the child in everyone, and Maddy’s worst Christmas had been here all those years ago. This one would be brilliant.

But now Plum was looking to her own life and love for a change. A man like Steve was such an unexpected bonus. She’d follow him to the ends of the earth and back. If only Maddy could find her match then she’d rest content.

She’d kept all those postcards from the Festival Exhibition, pictures of the Barbara Hepworth sculptures, in particular; those two figurines in harmony called
Contrapuntal.
She’d never forgotten the impact it had made on her. Life was a balancing act, and she’d finally found her other half in Stephen.

Maddy must make her own decisions about Brooklyn. It was a relief to be handing it over in one piece. It had felt like a burden for so long. Now, it was Maddy’s turn to sort things out. She would have bags of energy to face this challenge.

Maddy rode out to the Ridge along the old Green Road, the drovers’ road, and she had gates to open. It was frosty but still safe enough for the horse. She needed
to think out everything after the shock of Plum’s coming desertion.

Christmas was everything she hoped for, but it was tinged round the edges with panic every time she thought of the Armitages setting sail for a new life. Their news had kept her awake until dawn, worrying about how to sort out Brooklyn. She was angry at first, feeling dumped with the responsibility of it all, but she was a grown-up now, not a child. Time to face up to her duties.

Reluctantly she had discussed it over drinks at The Vicarage with their local solicitor, Barney Andrews, an earnest young man in tweeds, smoking a pipe, who listened intently and suggested they met in his offices over the Yorkshire Penny Bank to discuss it further in the New Year.

Maddy was in no mood for details. She wanted to shove it all to the back of her head, for her problems to just disappear. There was only one quick, easy solution and that was to sell the property.

‘There’s a big demand for gentleman’s residences and Brooklyn’s just the right size. Or we could sell it as a going concern, as a potential hotel or guesthouse. The Old Vic is ripe for development too. The market is buoyant after years of austerity and gloom. You’re a very lucky girl!’

She’d flashed her steely eyes at him. He was not a year or two older than her. ‘Thank you, young man,’ she replied.

He’d blushed at the rebuke. ‘You don’t want to sell, do you?’

‘Not if I can help it, but I’m not a hotelier and I can’t live there like Lady Muck on my own. It’ll have to earn its keep.’ There had to be a way, but Barney hadn’t come up with anything sensible.

It was market day in Sowerthwaite and the stalls filled the High Street, selling ironmongery, leather bags, fresh fish, toffees, nighties flapping from poles, fent bolts of cotton and woollen cloth, a watch repairer, fresh vegetables and fruit, shoppers gathering down the aisles, meeting up in cafés for hot tea and gossip. There was a bustle of sheep on their way to the pens, drovers bringing cattle for auction and farmers’ wives setting up booths to sell their butter and cheese. Maddy bought a copy of the local
Gazette
and the
Manchester Guardian
and retired to Polly’s Kettle Tearoom to read them in peace.

The
Gazette
was full of all the Christmas celebrations and New Year revels, country farming prices, balls, and grumbles about the upkeep of highways and gaslights flickering in the street.

In contrast, the
Guardian
was full of accounts of refugees pouring into the country from Europe with harrowing tales of escape. They were filling the displaced persons camps. Tidworth and Cannock, old prisoner-of-war camps, were turned over to hundreds of refugees who had nowhere to stay. The faces of women, looking exhausted and drawn, and holding terrified children, peered at her out of the paper. Here, they were all full of Christmas cheer, cosy, safe, warm in this Yorkshire pocket of peace and tranquillity. It wasn’t right.

Maddy walked the long way home through the narrow alleyways, skirting the high stone walls until she found the gates to the Old Vic. There was the familiar figure of the beech tree, its arms outstretched, beckoning as it had done so many times when she was a kid.

She scrambled up the fraying rope ladder with care and plonked herself down on the boards of the tree house; her thinking house, she’d called it. It was one of those crisp winter mornings when the light was clear and chilly. The sky was blue and the smell of coal fires and wood smoke drifted from the houses nearby, the washing lines limp as there was no wind. The air was crisp on her cheeks.

Down the stone steps lay the Old Vic, empty, shuttered, damp and deserted. Once it had thronged with noisy kids, rows of smalls hanging on the line, Enid hanging out of the window, having a tantrum, and Plum gathering them up in a crocodile line as they walked reluctantly to Sunday school or to see the welfare nurse. Was it is a whole lifetime ago that it welcomed in refugees of war and terror and despair?

Then it came to her in a flash, and she grinned and clambered down from the tree house. She ran back down to the marketplace, to Barney’s office, to a secretary who looked up startled at her flushed cheeks.

‘Can I see him? Has he got another client in?’

‘No, it’s time for his coffee and biscuits,’ the secretary said, plonking a tray on the desk.

‘Give them to me, Miss Bird. I’ll take it in,’ Maddy offered, pushing her way through the door.

‘Barney! It’s Maddy Belfield, and I’ve had a wonderful idea!’

‘Darling, you’re not serious! You can’t possibly take on all those people, these strangers, who don’t speak English?’

Plum had never seen Maddy so excited, bursting with plans to turn the empty Old Vic into a hostel for Hungarian refugees.

‘You will need planning permission. It’s a crazy idea.’

‘No, it’s not. The camps are bursting at the seams. There’s a local appeal going in Yorkshire. I’ve been on to them. If the Vic was good enough for evacuee children, it’ll do for adults with families, and there’s the Brooklyn too.’

‘Oh, no! Maddy, think about it. What does Barney say?’

‘He does what he’s told. It’s my money, and my contribution. There will be grants and expenses. It’s about time Sowerthwaite woke up to what’s happening in the world.’

‘You’ll need to be careful. There’s bound to be a protest in the High Street. Neighbours don’t like off-comers, strangers on their doorsteps. They don’t understand,’ Plum tried to argue, but it was no use.

‘Oh, stuff the neighbours! It can’t be any worse than when the vaccies came to town. People have heard the news and the Churches will give a hand.’ Maddy gave her one of those hard stubborn Belfield glares. There was no shifting her.

‘I hope you know what you’re taking on.’

‘You sound just like Grandma Pleasance. I bet she gave you a hard time when you took us all on?’

‘She did!’ Plum laughed. ‘I must be getting old, as I can only see all the dangers. How appalling of me.’

‘You have to admit it’s a great idea.’

‘It’s a wonderful, kind, and a generous act, and I’m proud of you…Where’s the buckets then? I suppose you want me to scrub the floor before I leave?’

‘Now you’re talking! The Vim is in the cupboard. It’s going to be a busy afternoon.’

Plum felt proud of Maddy, seeing her so focused, her chin stuck out against all authorities. How she reminded her of her own battle to use the Old Vic all those years ago. Now she could pack with less of a heavy heart, knowing Maddy was occupied with a new challenge, eating like a horse and full of plans. If only she had someone to share it with. Perhaps in time Barney would be her consort. She pictured them going down the aisle and then she paused. Perhaps not…