The Boy I Love (50 page)

Alice Charles opened her eyes and smiled wanly at her daughter. ‘You are a wonderful nurse, Mary,’ she managed to whisper. ‘I’ll have it in a minute. But first, will you
open the drawer in my bedside table, please, dear?’

The little girl did as she was told. Inside the drawer were some lovely lace hankies and a lavender pouch. Mary picked it up and smelled the wonderful fragrance. As she did so, Alice tried to
turn her head but the effort was too much. She breathed hard and it caught in her throat as a gasp. Mary was frightened by the sound.

‘Mother, please be still,’ she implored. ‘Please get better.’ And she tried in vain to stop the tears that were desperately forcing their way down her cheeks.

Alice drew herself up, praying silently for the strength to do what she had to do, and said, ‘Mary, dear, now don’t cry. It is going to be fine. Inside that drawer you will find my
prayer book. Please pass it to me.’

Mary found the book and put it in her mother’s trembling hands. Alice opened the book at the first page and showed it to her daughter.

‘Look here – see? I’ve written you a note. Promise me you will keep this prayer book with you always, and every night when you go to sleep, you will say your prayers and think
of me. I’ll be watching over you all the time, my dearest daughter. You will have a lot to do, but your father and your brothers need your help. Please don’t be sad, I will be with you
always in your heart.’

The dying woman made a last superhuman effort as she gasped, ‘Now be a good girl and go and call your father to come quickly. I need to speak to him.’ Then she fell back on the
pillows, exhausted.

To Mary it seemed as if she had fallen asleep.

‘Mother, please wake up, you haven’t eaten your breakfast.’ She shook her mother’s arm and it dropped heavily off the bed and just hung there. The little girl slowly
backed away from the bed and a scream rose in her throat.

‘Father! Come quick!’

The funeral service seemed very long to Mary. She tried hard to sing all the hymns well for her mother, but she wanted to cry all the time. As she sat in a pew with her prayer
book clutched in her hands, and her eyes screwed tightly shut, she prayed and prayed to God to make her mother come back. But He didn’t. Mary would often talk to Him at night, after that. She
never gave up asking, and she always kept her prayer book close by, along with the card she had made that day for her mother.

Mary now became a mother to her brothers even though she was the youngest. It was a lonely life, for her father could offer her little comfort as he was grieving himself, and the boys were busy
growing into men. Mrs Edge still came in every day and helped with the chores, but it was clear to everyone in the village that the vicar wanted to be left alone. He performed his duties with care
and diligence, but the spark of life had gone out of him.

Mary never really had time to make friends at school because as soon as the bell went, she was off home to cook and clean for the household. But it was not all bad. There was a farm just up the
road from the vicarage owned by a couple called Ernest and Olive Cooper. They had two sons of their own who went to school with the Charles boys, and all the lads loved to play on the farm.
Haystacks and cowsheds made great hiding places, and every summer the boys would spend long hot days in the fields. For Mary it was a magical place to go and be with all the animals. She loved the
smell of Olive’s kitchen where there was always an animal of some description in front of the range. Cats, dogs – even baby lambs. One afternoon there was a sheep giving birth and Mary
sat with Olive who was keeping an eye on it, because it had been having difficulties. At last the lamb dropped to the ground as Mary watched in awe. The farmer’s wife picked up the lamb and
placed it under the mother’s nose, rubbing it with the afterbirth.

‘They need a bit of help sometimes, to understand what it is all about, God bless ’em!’ she explained to the little girl.

But the ewe did not want to know. She butted the still wet and bloody lamb, and walked away. Mary was so distressed to see this that she burst into tears.

‘Don’t fret yourself, dearie,’ said Olive kindly. ‘I will take the lamb indoors and put it by the fire, and you can help me feed it by hand.’

Sure enough, they carried the lamb indoors and soon it was lying in Mary’s lap in front of the fire, while she fed it from a glass baby bottle. It was love at first sight. Mary was round
at the farm every minute she was free. The lamb grew bigger and bigger each day. Mary called her Alice after her mother. Her brothers teased her mercilessly and ran round her singing the old
nursery rhyme:

She even took it to school one day to show her class. Mary could never quite get over the way the mother sheep had rejected and abandoned her baby, but the farmer’s wife
was very matter-of-fact about it. She said it happened quite often.

‘But how could you not love your baby?’ whispered Mary.

‘Well, there are some women as have the same problem, dearie. There’s naught you can do about it though. You can’t
make
people love you.’

Having three brothers meant that Mary was always learning all sorts of things, not all of them good either. They taught her to spit and she was really good at it. In addition, she could skim a
stone across the pond with the best of them and ride a horse and drive a cart like a champion. Her happiest memories were of sitting on the hay cart at the end of a hot summer’s day. The sun
would be setting as they rolled back to Coopers Farm full of fresh air and cider and homemade pies. The boys would be fighting and scrapping on top of the hay like young lion cubs. She would sit up
front with her eldest brother Joseph, lulled by the swing of the horses’ rumps in front of her and the jangling of the harness and the screeching of the bats swooping around them in the
dusk.

As they reached the farm gates, the last streaks of the red sunset collapsed on the horizon, and darkness would fall. The boys would walk Mary back to the vicarage and then they would go to the
pub. The landlord of the Wheatsheaf in Allingham was well aware that the boys were not only too young to be drinking but also the vicar’s sons, so the boys were given non-alcoholic ginger
beer and big plates of shepherd’s pie. At home, Mary would creep in and check on her father, who was usually sitting at his desk preparing a sermon or writing letters to do with parish
matters. Sometimes she would find him fast asleep with his head on his arms. The Reverend Charles made Mary feel a little frightened because he was always sad and often stern with them. He just
could not give his children the affection they needed, and while the boys had each other for comfort, it made the girl miss her mother so much, especially at bedtime when she could remember so
vividly her tender embrace as she tucked Mary in, with loving words to help her dream wonderful things. Just before she fell asleep, Mary would remember her mother’s words and slip out of bed
to kneel on the floor and say her prayers, because she knew her mother was watching.

One morning Mary got out of bed and was horrified to see blood on the bed-sheets and on her nightdress. She checked herself all over for cuts and could find nothing wrong. In
the bathroom, she suddenly felt her stomach contract in pain. She sat down on the lavatory and bent over to ease the cramps, but felt a rush of liquid between her legs and heard it splash into the
bowl below. Looking down, she cried out in panic as the water in the bowl turned pink. Sobbing now with fear and disbelief, she grabbed a flannel and held it between her legs. What was happening to
her?

There was a knock on the door and she heard Joseph’s voice outside. ‘Mary? Come on, girl, we want our breakfast. What are you doing in there?’

Mary tried to rise from the seat, but another trickle of blood stopped her in her tracks. She called out, ‘Joe, something dreadful has happened. I am bleeding and I think I am dying.
Please fetch the doctor.’

As a young man of nineteen, Joseph had already picked up a good deal of knowledge about the opposite sex. However, it was one thing to discuss the female anatomy with his friends, but quite
another to speak of such delicate matters with his sister.

But he knew someone who could help. Telling his sister to stay calm and to hold on for a few minutes while he fetched help, Joseph sped off to Dr Jeffreys’ house two streets away, and
banged on the door. The doctor’s wife, Lorna, answered his knock. She was a trained nurse and often stood in for her husband when he was too busy to deal with minor ailments that arose during
surgery hours.

Blushing, Joseph explained to her what he thought was Mary’s problem. Lorna Jeffreys was very understanding, and quite impressed by this young man’s grasp of the sensitivity of the
situation. Fetching her coat and hat, and an old but clean sheet, she followed Joseph back to the vicarage, where poor Mary was still closeted in the bathroom. Joseph led the nurse upstairs and
tapped on the door.

‘Mary, dear, don’t panic,’ he called. ‘Mrs Jeffreys is here to help you. Please open the door. I will go downstairs and make us all a cup of tea in the meantime, and
don’t worry about breakfast. I will see to everything.’

Once Mary had heard her brother go downstairs, she opened the bathroom door and Lorna was soon attending to her, helping her bathe, showing her how to cut up and make a cloth pad and fetching
her clean clothes from the bedroom. At the same time she was giving the poor girl a welcome lesson on the female anatomy.

‘You must think me very foolish,’ said Mary, as Mrs Jeffreys explained about her monthly cycle. ‘I am so sorry to cause you all this bother. I just had no idea what was
happening to me. Mother died two years ago now and my education mostly consists of housekeeping and reading books that my father suggests to me. There has been no room for girlish talk or another
friend or their mother to teach me about such things.’

‘Oh, you poor child,’ said Lorna. ‘Please don’t apologize. It is a very natural thing to be worried when you start your cycle. But all is well now – and if you ever
need to ask me anything again, anything at all, please do not hesitate to come and see me. I am very happy to talk to you at any time.’

With that the doctor’s wife packed her bag and was gone, leaving Mary feeling as if her life had changed forever, and she was still not quite sure why.

Life went on and Mary toiled from dawn till dusk in the vicarage. She was quite content with her life, however, and loved nothing better than to see everyone round the table of
an evening, eating the food she had cooked and laughing and animatedly discussing things going on in the world. She still visited the farm all the time to see Alice, her pet sheep. Mr Cooper
suggested they might let her ewe have a lamb of its own one day soon.

The Charles boys were finding their feet now. Brother Joseph had been away in London studying to become an accountant and would come home on his rare leaves full of stories of drinking all night
and dancing till dawn. Joseph was the only one of the three boys who had left home, albeit temporarily. Reginald was still at school and studying very hard. He had a rather serious side to his
nature and his father had great hopes that he would follow him into the Ministry.

John Charles remembered his own years of study with great fondness, even though he had lost his parents so young. His meeting with Alice had changed his life completely. Not just because of her
sunny disposition and warm and caring spirit, but due to her inheritance. Although John vowed he would never touch his wife’s money, Alice had persuaded him to buy their first home – a
small terraced house in St Albans – as a means of securing their future. When they left to take up residence in the vicarage at Allingham, the couple did not sell the house but found a lodger
and his family. And to this day, the rent still provided extra income for the family – a welcome boost to the Reverend Charles’s modest stipend.

Alice had turned the sombre vicarage into a house full of light and joy, and the sound of happy children. John Charles missed his wife with every fibre of his being every day of her passing.

Stephen was the youngest of the boys and closest to Mary. There were only three years between them. He shared her love of animals and the two of them spent all their spare time at Coopers Farm.
Recognizing the lad’s love of farming, Ernest Cooper encouraged him to learn all he could about animal husbandry. One day, as they were sitting in the farm’s big welcoming kitchen,
Stephen announced that he wanted to be a vet when he left school.

When he told his eldest brother of his hopes and dreams, Joseph gave him a friendly punch on the arm and said, ‘That’s a fine ambition to have, young Stephen, but beware you
don’t get led astray like me and spend too much time in the pub instead of attending to your studies.’

Their father had just quietly entered the room and overheard this – and they fell silent, waiting for a reproof. But he hardly seemed to see them and just turned and went out again without
a word. Mary ran after him to make sure he had everything he needed. She hated to see her father so lost. When she returned to the kitchen, the boys had already forgotten the interruption and were
laughing and joking as Joseph continued his tales of life in the big city.

One day, Joseph came home with a friend called Henry Maclean. Henry was in the Army and talked about how there was going to be a war soon, with the Hun, and everyone would have to fight for
their country. All the brothers sat round the kitchen table listening to him and drinking beer, which Mary served them. She could only feel dread at the thought of a Europe at war, but the boys
were bright-eyed and full of plans to join up. She was secretly entranced by Henry, who seemed different from her brothers somehow. More sophisticated and well-groomed. He had beautiful sandy hair
that flopped in his eyes, and he had to keep brushing it out of the way as he talked. His voice was very mellow and he was well-spoken, but not too posh.