Markham, at the still centre of the storm of war, was not blitzed or fire-bombed, or shelled or rocketed, but the very stillness of the place seemed, after five years of ills being done to them at a distance, to create the ideal environment for moths and wood-beetles to chew away at the old self-satisfied society.
After the Normandy landing in the spring, the whole country thought that by the autumn the war would be over, but as the summer ground on, there were times when it looked as though there would never be a conclusion to it.
That year, after five years combating the dreary and austere with ingenuity and nous; the fear and anxiety with wit and sympathy, there gradually came about a change in the atmosphere in the back rooms and kitchens of the Town Restaurant.
Dolly had put her finger on it. ‘One thing after the other, it’s like we’re being punished for five years of being happy together.’
The ‘one thing after another’ was Paula telling her mother about being pregnant, and then Georgia coming over to tell them that Connie Hardy had suffered damage to her pelvis and back.
‘Look at it like this, Dorothy, Paula’s predicament might appear to be trouble just now, but there’ll come a time when it will be water under the bridge.’
‘I never thought I’d be the one to say it, but it’s never been the same since Mrs Hardy and Eve went away, and I keep thinking about what happened up there at The Cedars. I know that’s nothing to do with Paula and Robbo, but we used to be such a happy group.’
Ursula looked hard at her good friend. ‘Dorothy, this isn’t like you.’
‘And I think our Harry’s carrying on with Georgia, but she’s never said anything and I can’t ask a thing like that.’
‘And what about Harry?’
‘I couldn’t never ask him about his women friends. But it’s hurtful, you’d think they’d say.’
‘There’s probably nothing in it, I don’t think Georgia’s particularly interested in men at all at present. What we all need is another day out, Dorothy, a day at the sea. You will get it more in perspective. Water under the bridge, dear, you see if I’m not right about that.’
But Ursula was not right, except where Paula’s trouble was concerned. Harry’s death never did flow away, but stayed dammed up in Dolly to flood and threaten to drown her for the rest of her life.
The beginning of the end seemed to have started with Paula. Throughout the years when Robbo was in Africa she had never missed a week without writing to him, but as the months and months passed she found less and less to say to him. Her job was mundane and unchanging, and she could scarcely say very much to him about her voluntary work in canteens or her popularity at camp dances – he was a docker, with a man’s-eye view of a wife’s place in the home, and Paula knew that mention of anything that might spark off jealousy must be censored from her letters.
But then Paula fell in love.
When she began to be morning sick, only Marie knew of it and only Marie too knew who it was that Paula had been going out with so often, and so who was likely to be the father. Nothing would have dragged that out of her, or that he was part of Operation Overlord and was unlikely to return to this country, but would go back to America from where he came.
‘What are you going to do, Paula?’
‘Do? What do you think I’m going to do – I’m going to have the baby I’ve wanted for years.’
‘But Paula, it will be…’
‘Don’t say it, Marie! It will be my baby, the one everybody thought I couldn’t have because there was something wrong with me.’
‘What about Robbo?’
‘Look, Marie, because I thought I couldn’t get pregnant I went all the way with Louis…’
‘Louis! I thought it must be. Paula! How could you? With Louis… I know he’s nice and good looking and has plenty of money but…’
‘Don’t, Marie. Don’t say something you’ll regret when my baby is your niece or nephew. I love Louis and want his baby more than anything.’
‘I don’t know what your Dad’s going to say. He thinks you’re Greer Garson and Phyllis Calvert rolled into one.’
‘It will give him a chance to put his philosophies into practice.’
Marie didn’t even like to think about Robbo.
Born on Christmas Day 1944, Paula Carter named her daughter Louisa, after her father. For a few days, the only way of detecting that she was of mixed race was in her faintly purple nails and the black cap of black crimpy hair.
‘Oh, Paula,’ Dolly said. ‘She makes me want to cry because she is so beautiful.’
And so little Louisa was. Lusty, healthy and beautiful in that way of children who inherit only the choicest of genes of the Anglo-Saxon and the Negro races.
Robbo took the news badly – worse than anybody had imagined. He was not so much disturbed that Paula was pregnant by another man, but that her pregnancy was an advertisement of his own inadequacy.
A great, strong stevedore whose wife couldn’t get pregnant until she got there with some Yank who was swanning around England whilst decent Englishmen were fighting in some hole full of foreigners and flies.
It was as well that he did not get to know that Louis was a Negro or that he was a popular jazz musician, or that he and Paula had fallen in love. It was bad enough as it was, for Robbo had gone berserk in camp, driving wildly off in a stolen vehicle which he had crashed and wrecked. He had written Paula a vile and threatening letter that could only have passed a censor who thought that women like this one deserved it.
As soon as he could do so, Robbo went to his commanding officer for advice on divorce and made plans to emigrate to the Rhodesian copper-belt where strong men were needed and pay was fantastic. His Chaplain had talked to him about the woman taken in adultery and advised Robbo to think charitably. ‘Such mistakes happen in time of war.’
‘Not to me they don’t.’
Sam Partridge, like everyone else except Marie, had never for a moment dreamed that Louisa would be anything but fair-haired and white-skinned, but Paula placed the perfect baby in Sam’s arms and he was won over before he knew that she would grow coffee-skinned. Paula never told him that Louis was an officer until she heard that he was safe and wanted her to go to France and live with him there.
In any case, the shadow of Harry hung so darkly over the family that the colour of Louisa’s skin was entirely irrelevant.
The news of the failure of the airborne landing at Arnhem had filtered through almost at once, at first in rumours. Sam Partridge heard of it from an airman in the King William whilst he was having a quiet sit in the Four Ale Bar mulling over what to do about Paula who was getting so big that she could no longer disguise it. Markham did talk so.
‘It was on the news. Airborne landing.’ Sam’s attention was caught. ‘Some place called Nijmegen… a lot of dead. And for nothing as far as you could read between the lines.’ The airman could not possibly have known that the old man who limped and stumbled from the bar was not swaying because he was the worse for ale, but that he had a Paratrooper son – one who had risen to sergeant and who was his secret pride and wonder. Sam and Harry had been getting on a bit better lately, especially since Harry had said he would soon be going on an officer training course. Sam visualized the peaked cap, the polished shoes and the Sam Browne belt when Armistice Day parade came, but it didn’t do to let kids know you were proud of them in case they started to get above themselves, and Harry was bad enough already.
When Dolly went dark-eyed and gaunt into work the following day, all the women knew why. ‘I couldn’t bear to be at home. I don’t know what I should have done if I didn’t have this place to come to. As soon as I heard, I thought, I wish it was tomorrow so that I could be with the girls. I can’t bear the waiting. I’d rather be at work. Sam’s different, he’s sitting at home. Won’t say a word hardly. I said to him, You know Harry, always lands on his feet, he’s probably safe and sound. You sitting here waiting for a telegram is like tempting fate; but he said, if the worst has happened then I want to know straightaway, I don’t want no telegram boy going all over the place looking for me. Neighbours knowing before I do.’
Sam had sat at home for days tempting fate, but no telegram or news of his safety came. Then, because of an administrative blunder, they received first a letter through the regular post.
Dear Mr and Mrs Partridge,
Your son, Harry, was known to me more as a friend than my NCO. I cannot tell you how grieved I am for your loss and for his loss to the regiment. He was an exceptional soldier and an exceptional friend.
Sadly I have many letters of condolence to write, but this to you I have written first – I suppose because of those who died in the terrible battle in which we have been engaged, Harry Partridge is most directly in my thoughts. His loss is personal, we have been close friends ever since we started out together in ’39. He, like myself, was a motor bike enthusiast, and we spent many days together tootling around the countryside. It was on these jaunts that he told me of the Partridge family. He loved, and was enormously proud of you, his mother and father who against the odds have brought up children of whom any parent would be rightly proud. You will, of course, know these things, but I am sure that you will like to know how much he loved and admired you, Mrs Partridge, and what understanding and compassion he felt for his father. I believe it was from you, Mr Partridge, that he gained his great sense of justice.
The loss of a son – and for me of a personal friend – is one of the terrible consequences of going to war, but when one of the consequences is the waste of such soldiers as Harry – men of intelligence, ideals, and depth of vision of the future – one wonders whether without them there will be a future for England worthy of their death. I know that Harry’s great ambition was to become a Member of Parliament – his death is England’s loss too.
I have officially recommended that Harry receive the highest military award for bravery.
Sincerely
John Clark (Capt.)
The telegram arrived days later.
Charlie was still posted overseas. He was hit very hard when he was notified of Harry’s death. In his letters home he scarcely mentioned it. ‘Our Charlie’s grieving inward. I know him,’ Dolly said.
Marie, who knew him equally, agreed. ‘I only hope he don’t do something silly.’
But he did.
Charlie Partridge, when refused compassionate leave, went absent without leave and on the run. As he went AWOL when the wing he was attached to was preparing for an attack upon the enemy, he had committed the offence for which a good many serving men had faced the firing squad.
It was 1945, and within sight of peace by the time the Military Police caught up with Charlie. The long months in the glasshouse finished him: when he returned to Markham he was rigid-faced and moved jerkily. There were nights when Marie could hardly bear it when she was awakened by him sobbing silently in his sleep.
Perhaps it was fortunate that Sam Partridge never did hear about Charlie, although many said the outcome would have been the same.
As Sam had always said, Markham people would talk.
Suicide over his son in the Paras, they said.
That he was found floating in the park river he had been clearing of water-weed, and that the inquest found that he had drowned by Misadventure, meant nothing to the Markham gossips. They declared their own verdict: Suicide whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed, they said. This death-watch beetle talk that could eat into the structure of any family was partly scotched by Vern Greenaway, who wrote an obituary for the Markham Clarion, praising Sam, the well-known Markhambrian, old soldier and long-term fighter for justice and a fair society. Suicide, they said. And who can be surprised?
Later, there appeared another column reporting the posthumous presentation to Sam and Dorothy Partridge of their son Sergeant Henry Partridge’s award for bravery.
A pity he committed suicide before he collected the medal, they said.
Only days after hearing of Harry’s death, Georgia answered a request by her solicitor to visit his offices. Dark, aching days.
‘Not the news you would have wished, Mrs Kennedy, but your husband wants to sell the house. Very generous terms – he offers you half, which should be quite enough for you to buy a little cottage somewhere in the town.’
So what! Harry was dead and Hugh offered her the proceeds of half a house. Not much of a deal.
‘All I want, Mr Fox, is a decree nisi. It is my husband’s house, but I would be pleased to have the car and some of the furniture if that can be arranged.’
‘Mrs Kennedy, in your own interests…’
‘No, Mr Fox, he had two years of my time without pay for which I was well-fed and clothed and had free accommodation. Please get it settled as soon as possible.’
After five years in her job, with few goods in the shops, travel either limited or forbidden, and only The Picture House open for entertainment, Georgia estimated that she had accumulated enough money, from savings out of her salary and the legacy from her parents, to keep her going until 1947.
Because of the stressful atmosphere that seemed to pervade both her office and the kitchens these days, it was not the best of times to make positive plans. But plan she must for a future in which she would not be pleasantly and conveniently employed by the Government. A future in which she avowed that she would be Georgia – be herself.
At work, the pleasant cocoa and tea breaks were no longer the intimate and happy affairs of the previous four years. New women had come in, replacing Connie and Eve and Pammy and Trix; the Red Cross and WVS women seemed to change weekly and keep themselves aloof from the kitchen workers.
Only Ursula seemed to be unscathed. In fact Ursula – the radical suffragist, the revolutionary, the one-time scourge of Parliamentarians – plumped out a little and throve on marriage with Niall O’Neill.
The warmth of the sorority that had first tasted its freedom in the kitchens of the Town Restaurant escaped through holes blown out by the hurt that had been done to several of their number. There was no topic that was not a minefield. They went for their breaks and often only talked work or smoked hungrily, silently and fiercely, drawing smoke low into their lungs and returning it like flame-throwers. Ursula, ashamed of her ineffectualness and inability to help ‘her’ girls, no longer seemed even to notice cigarette smoke in previous forbidden areas.
Georgia missed the atmosphere badly. She desperately needed their support, but most of them were all far, far worse off than she was. Eve had not been to the house or called in at the office for months now. When Georgia wondered if Eve was avoiding her, she told herself that she was being paranoic about people avoiding her. First Dolly, now Eve.
Eve had phoned once or twice, sounding bright… ‘Terribly sorry not to have seen you, Georgia. This place is a mad-house. God, that’s the sort of thing we have to watch in here… but you know what I mean. Anyway, darling, we absolutely must get together soon.’ But something always turned up to prevent Eve from coming. Georgia understood: Connie was now out of hospital, but the V2 had left her with irreparable hips and so ended the career which had filled her life.
Marie was worried sick over Charlie, grieving over Harry and helping Paula with the baby.
Dolly became thin. Georgia was convinced that Dolly was avoiding her. The returns and lists which Dolly used to bring into the office after work, and which they both used as an excuse to talk for five minutes about what the latest film was like, or exchange a magazine, or to laugh at the latest half-baked directive from the Ministry of Food, were left on her desk when she was out.
If it was grief, then Georgia understood, but she would have liked her to have talked about Harry, to have talked about him herself, told Dolly what a gift of a man he was. Perhaps then Georgia might have been able to tell her about that last weekend in Brighton, when instead of visiting his mother and father he had spent his last two-day pass to make love with Georgia in a classy hotel in Brighton. But perhaps Dolly knew. Perhaps she could not bring herself to talk to the woman he had preferred to his mother to spend his last free hours with.
Georgia knew that it was time that she made the decision about what she must do. The house would be sold and she must decide where she would live. If she was to break with Markham, then it must be now. A clean break. A new start.
Ever since her mother’s and father’s funeral, she had kept in touch with her aunts and uncles. She wrote to them often, and occasionally visited on a snatched weekend or even a week’s holiday – once a few days at Christmas, sleeping soundly under the uneven roof, awakening to the sound of clucking and lowing, and the smell of woodsmoke and two centuries of stored apples and hams.
In this place, she soon saw how much of a joke it was that the Honeycombes had said that she was a real country girl. Until she came to pay visits to the small farm in this neglected corner of Hampshire, she realized that she had scarcely known the meaning of the word.
What went on at Croud Cantle Farm was magic to Georgia. Magic from the pouring of rennet into the zinc basins filled with milk, the separation and eventual pressing into cheese moulds, to the smoking and charming of the bees housed in old-fashioned skeps against a sunny wall, and the taking of their honey.
Whilst she was there, she felt alive.
She walked the Downs. Her favourite place was at the top of Tradden Raike which rose from behind the farmhouse, from where she could look down upon the quiet valley whilst, behind her, ancient, restless beeches moved constantly in the up-current from the valley. Sometimes she rode John Honeycombe’s horse, going cross-country through the village along the old bridle-path beside the river, or out over the wider metalled road towards Old Winchester Hill.
When looking down upon the farmhouse from the Downs, she scarcely dared allow herself to believe that the place did actually belong to her. Not morally, for Hyacinth and Uncle John had farmed the place both before and after Georgia’s father had brushed from his heels the dust of his home village.
Uncle John was as quiet a man as Hyacinth was extrovert. What came into her head, she usually said aloud. ‘Now you’re shut of that man you was married to, I reckon ’tis time you thought serious about what you’re going to do.’
‘I’m going to do my job. I love it. It’s a good position and when it comes to an end, then I shall probably apply for the Civil Service exam. There are some good opportunities for women attached to the Navy at Portsmouth.’
‘Oh Georgia! Don’t kid yourself. You wasn’t cut out to be no Civil Servant. You should get a hold of that young Crockford fellow and the two of you should get wed and start raising a fambly.’
Georgia often wondered why it was that she could smile amiably at Hyacinth when she expressed such opinions, yet had it been her mother who had behaved similarly, then Georgia would have bridled and said it was none of her business and stop interfering.
The decision that Georgia had to make involved a laboriously written letter from Uncle John.
We don’t get no younger and the place is getting a bit much for me and her. We put the whole of our lives into making something of the place and it would break Hyacinth’s heart if it was all for nothing. We don’t rightly know what to do because as you know the place wasn’t never ours but was Thomas’s your father’s and so by rights is yourn. I know Hyacinth has been on to you to come here, but as I told her a thousand times, that’s not practical even if you was married to somebody and in any case you set your heart on being somebody, not a farmer. Anyhow, Hyacinth has kept on to me to write and ask you and I see the rightness of her argument because it wouldn’t be right for her and me to keep going and spiling the place because our rumaticks don’t get no better with the years. What this place needs is a good strong pair of hands, and it’s what we haven’t got. And I can’t seen young men wanting to come back here once they get their demob. Anyhow, one way or the other we wants to hand over your rightful inheritance to you. There won’t be no trouble us getting out, because there’s been a couple of alms-houses empty here for more than a year because there be few true Cantle folk left to qualify to get one. Hoping we shall hear some good news from you. Hyacinth sends her love but that’s all of her messages I am going to write else I should want another sheet of paper, you know what she’s like.
Your affectionate Uncle John Honeycombe
Georgia, in answering John Honeycombe’s letter, promised that she would soon visit him and Hyacinth. She was tempted to go to them now, she felt unwell from unreliable periods and aching rib muscles which depressed her because she could not get relief from the nagging. She longed to go over to the farm at Cantle to be fussed over for a few days by Hyacinth. Although she was pleased to be leaving Hugh’s house, the little one in Newton Lane had looked cramped and felt cold. The memory of the rosy warmth of the spacious kitchen in the farmhouse at Cantle was tempting: living there where life, ruled by seasons and weather, went on much as it had a century ago, and where one would not be affected so much by the dragging on of the war.
She was not interested in food and made herself very hasty and indifferent meals, or brought home bits and pieces of left-overs from work. Harry, Eve and Nick intruded on her thoughts constantly. It did not seem possible that Harry had become one of hundreds of bodies in a war-grave: it often seemed to her that it was as though he had been buried alive.
She had not seen Eve for weeks and was hurt by her avoidance, so that when she recognized Eve’s voice on the telephone a few weeks before Christmas, Georgia held back her usual enthusiasm.
‘Hello, stranger… I thought you had emigrated.’
‘Georgia, I am sorry, but you know how it is, the weeks go by.’
‘For God’s sake, Eve, you’re only a mile away, not in Timbuctoo.’
‘We’ve had a lot of new patients.’
‘I’ve really missed you. It’s been so awful lately.’
‘Hasn’t it just! Absolutely bloody.’ She stopped.
‘Eve? Are you all right?’
‘Of course, right as ninepence.’ Another moment’s pause, then her voice came over tight and high. ‘Only thing wrong is this morning bloody sickness… it’s a difficult fact to hide in a place like this.’
‘Oh, Eve.’ Now it was Georgia who was silent, then she said, ‘Eve, just come. Don’t say anything else… we can’t talk over the ’phone, just come as soon as you can.’
‘Oh, I don’t know… you don’t want to hear my troubles.’
Eve arrived the next evening amidst Georgia’s packing-cases and general mess of house-clearing, looking a lot like the old, plump Eve. Except that now it was more a thickening and swelling that gave her this appearance than youth and a soft line.
‘I’m sorry about this mess, I’m packing up.’
‘So I see. Going far?’
Georgia hunched her shoulders.
‘Not somebody else who was going to go away without saying?’
‘Of course not. I’ve only just made up my mind… anyway, that’s not the burning issue here.’ They stood facing one another for a moment: Eve’s weeks of avoidance, and Georgia’s apparent secrecy stood between them; but Georgia stepped over those obstacles and they stood, arms tightly around one another.
‘Thank God for friends, Georgia.’
‘A friend you could have come to before now and said that you were…’
‘Up the spout, in the club?’
‘…pregnant. You don’t have to put a face on here. Let’s have a drink. Come on, it’s marginally better in the front room and the cigs are in there.’ They went through into the other room, touching one another with relief at being in each other’s presence again.
Eve shook her head. ‘Can’t smoke these days… makes me sick as a dog. Anyway, the nicotine probably gets into the baby’s blood or something. But Tottie and I could do with a Scotch.’ She placed both hands over her belly.
‘You’re sure then? It is a baby, and not just a miss or two because of the worry about your mother or vitamin starvation? My Curse has been all over the place lately; the Welfare ladies reckon it’s lack of vitamin B – I’m eating Marmite… well, when I can get it.’
‘Perhaps you’ve got my trouble – for sure Marmite won’t cure that.’
‘Not on your life. I’m making plans, and they don’t include cots and prams.’
‘Well… my plans have to. I’m well over four months. One of the docs at Oaklands had a feel.’
‘You aren’t going to get…’
‘Married to the father? No father. He was just a quick trick for both of us – and in any case… he bought it!’
‘Oh Eve. Did he know about the baby?’
‘No – it’s as I said, one of those quickies that seem such a good idea at the time. It was my day off… Oh God… so sordid… you know how it goes.’
‘That wasn’t what I was going to ask you. I meant, you’re not going to have an abortion? You always said that you knew the right doctors in Harley Street.’
‘Have it fixed? Not on your life. I don’t much care now who the father is, little Tottie is in there and starting to move. Here, give me your hand… put it there. I’ve nursed abortions that have gone wrong. Not for me! In any case, why not have little Tottie? I’ve only got Connie in her wheelchair and my randy old man who’s cleared off. Why are you looking so straight-faced, Georgia darling? Don’t tell me you’re shocked.’
‘Of course I’m not shocked, I was only wondering what you are going to do. You can’t go back to your mother’s flat again, not with a baby and the V2s.’
‘Lord, no. Connie couldn’t do with babies about the place – she’s writing some sort of book about her exploits; I doubt if she’ll get permission to publish until the war’s over. She’s got a super little ground-floor flat now, right in the heart of London with an amenity garden and trees, quite sweet. She’s not all that badly off, plenty of people around her. Taken to wearing long skirts and she sits there or gets wheeled about by her admirers, quite the queen bee. Being a grandmother won’t be her style. Certainly not having Tottie about the place.’
‘If you had said…’ Georgia waved at the packing cases, ‘I might have held on to the house a bit longer.’
‘Georgia my love, that’s really sweet of you, but I have got myself some very suitable accommodation right in the heart of Markham.’ She laughed, a little stridently. ‘Give the old Markham gossips something to sup with their beer. Freddy Hardy’s girl’s up the spout and gone to live with the postman. That’s right – I’m going to live with Monty. He’s so nice, he’s like a child waiting for Christmas. Did you know he’s got this Jewess there? She’s quite decent, too – doesn’t look it, but she’ll be smashing with Tottie – I’m sure of it.’
‘You’re going to live with Monty and Hildegard?’
‘It’s a perfect arrangement. Monty’s like an old hen at the prospect of a baby, he’s doing up a cot and painting ducks on it, and Hildegard was a nanny before she escaped from wherever she’s come from.’
Georgia went very quiet.
‘I’m really, really sorry, Georgia. I haven’t meant to keep you out of things. I kept telling myself I should come and see you.’
‘Then why didn’t you? That foreign woman who hasn’t been in the town five minutes knows all about it, but not me. I thought we were supposed to be friends.’
‘For God’s sake, Georgia!’ She downed her neat whisky and held out her glass. ‘Why do you think I didn’t come to my best friend… my only real bloody friend. I was ashamed! I was a-shamed! I couldn’t bring myself to tell you I’d got myself a bun in the oven. You would be the same with me, you know you would: you are as much of a smart arse as I was about not getting caught. I couldn’t bear it at first, so I just ignored all the signs and put them down to the stress-factor that they keep telling us about at Oaklands. When I think of all the men I’ve slept with… and I let myself get in the club on a one-night stand. A casual roll in the hay. I wasn’t even all that keen… and he was never at all my type. I don’t even know how it happened – I never go out on a date unless I’m wearing my diaphragm, but I wasn’t on a date, so I hadn’t got it… but he said he was OK… maybe it’s not just a story, maybe they do put a hole in every tenth one to keep the birth-rate up. Hell, Georgia, I don’t know how it happened. It happened!’
‘Hey, wind down, Eve, this is me – Georgia. Am I so intimating that my only real friend can’t tell me she’s pregnant… made a mistake?’
‘Darling, no, of course you are not. It’s me, it’s me. Now I’m here I can’t understand why it was that I didn’t come to you at once. Oh, but I did feel such a fool just when I was boasting about the wonderful prospects of my specialist nursing career.’
‘Here, have another drink and don’t be so damned dramatic.’
‘I wish I had come earlier, but now that I have, do let’s try and get back on to our old footing. Tell me about these plans you are making. What’s all this moving business then?’
‘I’ve got a chance of a little place in Newton Lane – one up, one down and a sort of kitchen-scullery. The decree nisi will soon be granted – it’s only a matter of time and I shall no longer be Mrs Kennedy.’
‘Sounds cosy.’
‘It will do until I make my fortune. I’ll make us some Welsh rarebit. Here, read this whilst I’m in the kitchen. It’s from my Uncle John. Tell me what you think.’
After a few minutes, Eve followed Georgia into the kitchen and perched on the table. ‘This,’ she flicked the letter, ‘this is what you really want, isn’t it? We’ve all got a fantasy of our particular place in the sun – this one’s yours, it sticks out a mile, Georgia. I don’t know why you are even thinking about Newton Lane.’
‘I’m taking the cottage precisely because the farm is a dream. If I’m anything at all, I am practical.’
‘You and Nick? Tilling the good earth. It could be idyllic, couldn’t it?’
Georgia smiled wanly and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Farming is many things, but it’s not an idyll if you’re the one doing it.’
‘Nick’s the right type. He always seems to thrive on exposure to the elements.’
‘He’s got big responsibilities now. He has taken Pete away from Nancy. The child’s living with Nick’s father until Nick gets released, but Mr Crockford is not a well man to have charge of a seven-year-old. I know what Nick would like, he’d like me to give up my work and go and live at Roke Acre. No strings except love, he said. Romantic, isn’t it? But I couldn’t! Back out at Emberley again… with Nancy’s child and old Robert – I should shrivel and wither away. For God’s sake… I’d be a housewife again!’
‘So why not go to your Uncle John’s? Be a farmgirl.’
‘I’m an administrator. Not just anybody can take over a farm. I hardly know how to milk a cow.’
‘Well, you asked, and I’ve told you what I think. You should go for the dream, Georgia.’
Georgia dished up the supper. ‘Oh, let’s eat and not try to sort out my problems as well as yours.’
‘Hey, come on. My problem is sorted and yours are not problems, they’re choices.’
It was quite late when Georgia watched Eve pulling on her knitted cap. ‘Come and see me again soon.’
‘I won’t stay away again – promise. I finish at Oaklands in a month, we’ll see a lot of one another, and I’ll need someone to pace the waiting room when I go into labour.’ She kissed Georgia affectionately. ‘Thanks, Georgia. I’m not really as flip as I sound you know. I don’t want anybody knowing about how I got Tottie. I’ll let her grow up before I tell her. Having a bastard baby isn’t the thing a girl chooses; but I should never have married… It was Harry Partridge.’
For a moment it didn’t sink in. ‘What was?’
‘Tottie, Pudding Club, bun in oven, the quick trick, idiot. It was dear fun-time Harry with his “Honestly, I’ll be careful,” his “Trust me, I wouldn’t let it happen for both our sakes.”’
‘I can’t believe it, I thought you hardly knew him.’
‘I didn’t really, but he was good fun – you knew he would never get too heavy. You know what he’s like, you went out with him, didn’t you?’
Georgia forced herself to be flip. ‘Only for a ride on the old Vincent and the odd quick trick, like you say.’
By Christmas, Georgia had moved some of the furniture into the Newton Lane cottage and arranged the sale of the rest. It was a cosy enough place downstairs, but the bedrooms when no fires were lit in them were icy. On Christmas Eve, Georgia put on a little stand-up supper for her friends.
Georgia’s relationship with Nick tottered on. Since their days together back in the spring, they had been together on only a few occasions, and not at all since Harry and the Metropole. Now he had gone home on seven days Christmas leave, and said he would put Pete to bed and then come.
He had stayed overnight in the Station Road house once or twice, but since he had taken Pete away from Nancy, he had never done so. ‘I’m sorry, Georgia, but he’s my kid, I have to be there whenever I can. He’s still getting used to the change. My responsibility. It’s one of the things a man doesn’t think about when he’s rolling in the hay.’ She knew that tonight being Christmas Eve, he would be sure to want to get back to see to Pete’s presents. She really did not mind: since the shock of Harry’s death so soon after their scatty and delightful weekend in Brighton, her appetite for sex had diminished.
Ursula and Niall O’Neill, who lived only yards away from Georgia, came with Dolly who, for the first time in her married life, was staying away from home at Christmas and spending two days with the O’Neills. In one of Paula’s dresses, she looked strangely unmotherly and less than her fifty-five years.
Eve came, looking plump and pretty, and talked with cheerful animation about her expectations of Tottie but, Georgia noticed, not to Dolly Partridge. Was it right not to tell Dolly that Harry was the father? They had talked about it briefly, but Eve’s opinion was that the whole thing was too complex.
‘Can you imagine, Georgia! Dolly Partridge discovering that her precious Harry left the Partridge family a legacy? She would smother me. I don’t want Tottie to be a Partridge, or a Hardy either. I shall register her as “Father Unknown” and tell her who her father is when she understands how easy it is to cop it. Young girls before they get the urge can be devastatingly judgemental. Dear Monty says she can have his name. Tottie Iremonger? Sounds quite pleasant.’
Nick was helping Georgia in the tiny back room. ‘You’re quiet.’
‘It’s a patch I’m going through.’
‘Do you want to talk about it? I could stop on for an hour.’
‘Talking won’t do much good… it’s just everything! My life has got itself in tatters, fragmented – this house, the divorce, my job. And Uncle John wants to get out of the Cantle farm. I’ve got to pull it together again.’
‘Would you come to Emberley for lunch? Tomorrow if you like. You could talk about it. It helps. Pete wants a party and Mrs Dancer has made a cake. I know it’s not this swish buffet kind of thing that you like, but Pete and my Dad will love it if you came.’
He stood there, big and slightly abashed, as he used to when he was a youth and came into the Honeycombes’ kitchen to ask if she was coming out. Suddenly she would have loved to have taken his large, knuckly hands and led him up to the icy bedroom and burrowed with him under the eiderdown till morning and awoken with a clear mind in a carefree world.
‘I’d love to come.’
‘Thanks, Georgia.’ He bent to her level and they kissed with the same longing and passion as they had back in the Spring, before Georgia’s emotions had become confused.
‘Oh dear, I forgot my bike tyre’s gone. The car’s back on the road, but I haven’t any petrol allocation.’
Lighthearted at the prospect of her spending the day at Emberley, he laughingly swept her up in his arms. ‘I’ll carry you.’
At that moment, Eve came in. ‘Don’t tell me that at long last the hero’s going to carry off the fair lady. I thought you never would.’
‘Chance would be a fine thing. Do you know anybody who does black market petrol?’
Eve, now well into her pregnancy, looking blooming and prettier than ever, laughed and put on a funny voice. ‘You want nice petrol? I get.’
The last Christmas Day of the war was a terrible day for Georgia. Eve had told Nick where to find her father’s stash of petrol, and he was going to cycle over from Emberley to get one of the cans. It was a long time, if she ever did, before Georgia stopped blaming herself for mentioning using the car to go to Emberley. If I had been content to borrow Eve’s cycle, none of it would have happened. It was a long time too, before she could once more shake off the notion of divine retribution.
She was already edgy when, after waiting about, ready to leave for two hours after Nick had arranged to call, he had not arrived. Then a police sergeant and a constable arrived.
‘Sorry to disturb you on Christmas Day and all that… but there’s been this accident, ma’am. Bottom of Longmile Hill by the T-junction.’
Georgia’s expression became fixed.
‘The only clue we could find as to who the victim was is this letter with your address inside. Do you know a Mister Nicholas Crockford?’
Her blood withdrew from her veins and seemed to be pumping only through the valves of her heart and going no further, the thud echoing and banging in her ears. Her insides became shrivelled and chill and her mouth dry.
‘You look a bit dicky, you’d better sit down, ma’am. Are you family?’
‘No, close friends, we grew up together. He was on his way to call on me.’
‘We haven’t been able to get in touch with the next-of-kin yet…’
‘He’s not dead?’
‘No, no, ma’am – not dead… injured bad.’
‘How did it happen?’
‘It appears he was carrying a can of petrol. We’ve only got the driver of the jeep’s word. He says the bike swerved and a can of petrol went over and caught light. One of them must have been smoking or just lighting up, or it could have been a spark from the metal dragging on the road.’
‘He didn’t smoke.’
‘Well, we shall be asking them sort of questions later.’
She looked blankly at them. ‘He can’t talk, ma’am. The hospital says his trackier, that’s his throat, and his lungs got burnt from breathing in the burning petrol. They got him under sedation.’
‘For a moment I thought you meant that he’d been killed.’
‘He’s got some burns, and his breathing is bad.’
Having established who the casualty was, the two policemen tramped back to the station to secure the use of a vehicle so that his lady friend could be taken to see to the victim’s child and the next-of-kin who was apparently pretty ill. The policemen then relaxed their respective ranks – it being Christmas morning.
‘I reckon she’s a bit more than a friend to our man, Constable.’
‘Ah, and I’ll tell you something else, Sarge – she’s got a bun in the oven or I’m a Dutchman.’
‘Can’t say that I noticed that.’
‘Five times my missis has been that way – it don’t necessarily have to show much for me to be able to tell. She was too thick on the waist for such a slim bit. And, apart from that, there was a box of raspberry-leaf, which an’t much use for anything except a woman in the family way. I’d say she was three or four months. You get a nose for it.’
The grizzled sergeant pursed his lips as he did when he was being jovial with his men. ‘Five kids? I reckon you must have a bit more than a nose for it, lad.’