The Daisy Club (22 page)

‘
Dear Clare
.'

There was a long pause while Corporal Bastable, who had not only had his leg badly injured, but his right hand blown off, thought through what he could say to Clare.

‘
Dear Clare
,' he began again. ‘I hope you are well.'

Freddie dutifully wrote this.

‘
I hope you are well . . .
'

There was another long pause as he stared past Freddie.

‘Can I see that?'

Freddie held up the writing pad so that he could read what he had dictated, which Bastable did, nodding with solemn approval, and then he looked at Freddie, and looked away, and then back at her again.

‘I don't know how to tell her about my hand,' he confessed. ‘That's what I'm trying to work out, how to tell her. I think she'll want to chuck me if she knows. On the other hand, I can't wait till I get home, can I? I mean to say, give her a worse shock, I should have thought.'

Freddie could see his point, and it was a sticky one.

‘How about if you put it just like that?' she asked. ‘Say what you have just said to me, but perhaps like this
.
“
The thing is, I don't want you to chuck me, but I understand if you do. I have sustained serious injury to my right arm and leg, as a result of which I now only have a left hand.
”'

‘I think you're right, Nurse. I think that would be all right, to put it like that.'

Freddie dutifully wrote as she had suggested, and showed it to Corporal Bastable.

‘That's good,' he said approvingly. ‘And then I could make a joke of it after that. Say “
As you know I never did like my right hand much, the left always being my favourite
.”'

Freddie wrote that, too.

‘
How is Murphy? I hope he is not missing me too much?
'

Freddie paused, guessing at once who Murphy was.

‘He's my mongrel sheepdog,' Corporal Bastable told her proudly. ‘Very good dog, happily for me, considering everything that's happened. He responds to the whistle, don't need a lead!'

Freddie smiled, suddenly, for no reason she could think of, wondering about Blossom and how she was getting on. And then wondering about the Hall and how long it would be used for mending young soldiers like Corporal Bastable. Somehow the Court, despite all its colourful characters, seemed to be fading from her, and she couldn't have said why. It was as if they were all in a painting that was about to be bought by someone else – which was ridiculous because everyone knew that the Valentynes had been at the Court since for ever, and no one could move them on, but no one.

At The Cottages, now that summer was on its way, Jean might have been forgiven for feeling smug, since her new potatoes and cabbages, and other vegetables, were all doing so well. But what might have been a cause for celebration was cancelled out by the misery of the Muggleton children put into her care, their homesickness, and their inability to adjust to country life. On top of that the Hall, serving as a temporary hospital for the wounded British Army returning from Dunkirk, was a vivid reminder that the lull that had fallen after the outbreak of war was now formally over, and the gloves were well and truly off.

‘I don't know what to say or do to cheer my lot up,' Jean confided to Freddie, when she dropped in for a late-night cup of tea.

‘Oh, don't worry, the Lindsay brothers are the same, they hate everything, but everything. The food, the village, all of it. They constantly complain that there is nothing to do, and we have to pretend that our carrots have come out of a tin. They thought eggs came out of a shop, and when I showed them that hens laid them, and where they came from, they were so disgusted they refused to touch one ever again. Not that you can blame them, when you come to think of it!'

They both laughed.

‘I haven't heard from Joe at all, not since he went back,' Jean suddenly confided.

Freddie, who had found out about Joe from the usual village gossip, looked sympathetic, although she couldn't imagine taking the time to fall in love just as a war broke out, or anything else, really – she just couldn't. She wanted to mend people, not marry them.

‘I expect he's training so hard he doesn't have time to pick up a pen.'

‘Oh, I know, and I have nothing at all to do, and yet I find time to write, in between throwing myself into the fields at five in the morning, and looking after that lot upstairs.' She jerked her head up towards the ceiling, indicating her clutch of evacuees. ‘Mind you, I have had a bit of a vee for victory with Miss Maude Beresford. I did not ask, but she has offered to put up some land girls to help with the farm work. Really very decent of her considering how much she has disapproved of my growing potatoes and cabbages in her fields.'

‘What kind of land girls are they going to be?'

Jean shrugged her shoulders. Who knew?

Freddie left Jean at The Cottages, walking back to the Court, her torchlight catching the newly planted vegetables of all kinds that had taken the place of flowers in all the Twistleton cottage gardens. Making compost to feed these vegetables was the new hobby of everyone in the village – they used everything from manure and old bits of horsehair mattress to sodden newspapers.

The Dig for Victory campaign had started the previous September, and had caught fire. There was not a park, an allotment, a council flower bed or a station yard that did not now sprout everything from leeks to shallots, from potatoes to cabbages.

Even by torchlight it was all too evident that it had changed the look of the village, but on the other hand, no one could say that the sight of the vegetables did not give cause for optimism. The rows of fronded tops and rounded shapes, interspersed with marigolds to protect them from disease, were defiantly pretty – perhaps as pretty as any flower border, once everyone grew used to not expecting flowers.

The following morning Freddie dressed as usual and, after breakfasting the Lindsay brothers, drove up to the Hall, the back of her car filled with all the usual necessities, only to find Maude standing on the steps outside.

Maude, as always nowadays, in her Great War nurse's uniform, was as neat as a pin, but today she was wearing not just her starched apron and headdress, but an expression on her face as shut as the car door that Freddie was now closing.

‘Everyone is to be moved on,' she told Freddie in a flat voice. ‘No one is to stay. Orders have come this morning, via Sister on the telephone. She does not agree with them, but apparently every case is to be assessed and then appropriate measures taken to place each patient in a specialist unit. Some of them will even have to go to London for repair work. London!'

Maude raised her eyebrows at Freddie, her look giving Freddie to understand that she thought this the maddest idea of all, since everyone knew that once the bombing and the gassing started, London would be sure to be the worst hit.

‘Do they not think we are coping?'

‘Nothing to do with how we are doing, Freddie dear, all to do with the top brass wanting everything in neat little packages, and please tell me when do they not? Everything done on a map, everyone a number, no thought to what it does to the patients' morale to be moved on just as they are feeling better. No thought to the harm it could do our patients physically, to be bumped about in the back of a converted lorry, or some decrepit ambulance. Oh yes, and it seems that a great deal of our work is too old-fashioned, and we are using too many VADs by dividing up work into sections as we have – that, too, is old-fashioned, it seems. Well, I mean to say, Freddie dear, it seems to me to be the Great War all over again! Nincompoops everywhere!'

Freddie stared at Maude. She had never ever called Freddie ‘dear' before, but not only that, she had never talked to her at any length, least of all voiced an opinion.

‘It has always been my experience that people in authority are put there because nothing else can be found for them to do. When we nursed at the Front, we who were good at the nursing did the work without complaint, but there was always someone who was hopelessly incompetent who had to be found a job. So they put them in a position of authority. Someone would be brought in who would make life more unpleasant, both for the patients, and for the nurses. Of course class came into it, too. The worst jobs for the aristocracy was the rule of the day, probably still is. Corpses to be laid out, bed-pan duties – gracious, and who is this coming up the drive?'

They both turned and stared as a dilapidated car slowly made its way to the front steps of the Hall.

The young girl who climbed out was carefully, if poorly, dressed. The glove on the hand she extended to Maude and Freddie was much mended, but meticulously clean. She wore a felt hat, and she had a light tweed coat, which was a little too short for her dress, so that it showed an inch or two beneath. Her shoes were sturdy, and her stockings carefully darned.

‘I have come for Corporal Bastable,' she stated, looking from Maude to Freddie, and back again.

‘Corporal Bastable? Yes, of course. You must be Clare?'

‘How did you know?'

Freddie couldn't say because she had written to her on his behalf, so she only smiled.

‘Corporal Bastable is not ready to come home yet, Miss.'

‘Oh, I think he is. See, he wrote to me that he wants to come home, and that he misses me so much.'

Freddie's mouth went a little dry. Oh, dear heavens! The truth was that she had written a few more things at the bottom of Corporal Bastable's letter, more than the good man had perhaps meant her to put. She had said that he was missing Clare, and because he had touched on their woodland walks together, Freddie had put that he missed those walks with her so much. Oh, and she had put a little something about moonlight, and about love, and about how often he thought of her when he saw the stars, and how happy they could be together once the war was over, or perhaps even before? Crikey!

‘I'll take you to see him,' Freddie said, ignoring the warning look that Maude had given her. ‘They'll all be breakfasted now, and up and about, shaved, too. I shaved him yesterday, but someone else will have done early duty today.'

The reunion between the good corporal and his girlfriend was muted. To say that the young man looked amazed was, Freddie thought afterwards, like saying that Hitler was
rather
horrid. The poor one-handed young man's face almost fell apart, emotions tearing through him – joy that Clare was there mixed with fear that she would hate seeing his lack of a hand and all the rest of his injuries, and then incredulity that she had made the journey from so far away, and that she had driven herself.

‘You're coming home, Benjamin Bastable,' she told him. ‘Coming back to Murphy and me.'

Only trouble was Maude was far from pleased by the notion.

‘Can't just let him go AWOL, Freddie dear,' Maude told her. ‘It won't do.'

‘Surely we can manage something?'

Freddie looked at her pleadingly.

‘I daresay you have a plan?' Maude was now looking, for Maude, almost amused.

‘I have to admit to feeling a plan coming on,' Freddie admitted. ‘Well, Miss Beresford, since they are all going to be turfed out, surely, one way or another, Corporal Bastable can just be found to have been turfed out a little earlier than the others? See, here we have the lists of patients. My point being that we have them, and we can hold them, distract Sister, and then, whoosh, suddenly Corporal Bastable will be gone with all the others, a big tick by his name, but somehow he gets lost the other end, but with a war on, albeit so far only the Phoney War, one wonders who will bother about him.'

Maude surveyed Freddie's guileless if freckled face with equanimity, while Freddie looked up at her, wide-eyed.

Maude sighed, lightly.

‘With you on our side, Freddie dear, victory will surely be ours within months. I certainly can't see the little corporal from Germany defeating you.'

So Corporal Bastable and Clare drove off together, and that night Freddie finally left the Hall to bicycle home without lights, hoping that she would arrive back to some sort of supper left out for her by Branscombe or Jessica, which happily she did.

‘Still up, Aunt Jessica?'

Freddie looked from the delicious tray of food laid out by, she guessed, Branscombe, to Jessica who was sitting knitting at the kitchen table.

‘Yes, Freddie dearest.' Jessica nodded briskly at the tray. ‘Tuck in, duckie, you must be starved, on your feet all day as you are. Eat and then sleep, sleep and then eat, it's the only way to keep going.'

Freddie took off her cap, and undid the pin that had secured her hair, quickly re-braiding her hair and throwing the plait back over her shoulder in her characteristic way.

‘Everyone is to be sent on. The Hall is finished as a nursing home. Don't know why, and nor does Miss Beresford. I shall have to go back to Bramsfield and take orders from there.'

Jessica paused, momentarily, in her work, the sock she was knitting swaying a little between the three needles.

‘I heard from Aurelia that Longbridge has been cleared of everything, that it is to be requisitioned by the army. Perhaps it is only a matter of time before the Hall is, too?'

She shook her head and resumed her work, the sock seeming to quickly lengthen to a man's size foot even as Freddie ate.

‘Longbridge Farm with the army installed is not a pretty thought,' she murmured.

‘No,' Jessica agreed. ‘Life is about to change immeasurably, yet again, thanks to Dunkirk.' She stopped knitting and thrust all three needles through the ball of wool in a short savage gesture. ‘Hitler thinks we've had it, Freddie, and perhaps we may have, but we just must not go down without a fight. Doesn't matter what happens, we must fight to the last. What we need above all . . .' She stood up. ‘What we need is aeroplanes. I heard from Blossom yesterday, they're short-handed. So. I'm going to join
her
lot. Aeroplanes, aeroplanes, aeroplanes, that is what we need, Freddie, and I want to be part of building those fighters. And do you know what? I shall kiss each piece I contribute, and murmur to it: “Go to it, and kill”. What a thing for a God-fearing person to say they hope to be doing, but I shall, believe me – I shall be leaving at crack of dawn tomorrow. If we don't cross paths, God bless you, darling.'