Surprise, surprise, Mil phoned and asked me to go for a coffee this morning! She said should she come and fetch me but I said no, I’d come on Sky.
I am much more confident now and it’s only a few miles down to the village and actually I did jolly well and didn’t wobble at all once I got going.
I also thought it would be a great chance for me to get away from the farm, see where Mil lived and do some shopping at the chemist whilst I was at it. I’d get my peroxide and other items and put them on the farm’s account. Ha!
All of which I did. It is simply wonderful having my own transport and being independent.
Mil’s bungalow is on the outskirts of the village (luckily on the opposite side to Betty Folder’s so the one won’t know when I’m visiting the other). That’s the trouble with a small place – everyone knows what is going on and I like keeping some things to myself.
In London one could be completely anonymous and move around with nobody knowing anything about you. It was only at the Windmill, or my end of Barkston Gardens, that I knew other people and was known myself.
Mil possesses a neat little garden in front and a few apple trees at the back, in a sort of orchard. It is very modern and new and she said she bought it when August and I became engaged. She also told me it was a bit of a wrench having to leave the farm but she feels more settled now.
She has a daily who cleans for her, but Mil does all the cooking and has many friends in the village and plays bridge twice a week. She seems very sociable and it’s probably far easier for her to pop in and see people there than it was when she lived up here. Though I suppose before the war she was able to drive and get around more. Anyway, she’s driving again now but still very careful about mileage, even though petrol is no longer rationed.
I might learn to drive one day. Wouldn’t that be something!
I quite liked Mil’s bungalow although it is a bit poky after the farm. She has a drawing room, hall, compact kitchen and bathroom, a large bedroom for herself and a tiny one at the back for visitors.
She doesn’t have any animals but admits she would quite like a cat, so I’ve offered her a choice of kittens when the next batch comes along. Apparently she never allowed cats into the farmhouse because of August, and Mrs Stow, and the dogs. She laughed when I told her I’d given them all names.
‘Ming’s my favourite,’ I said. ‘She’s the tabby with the gorgeous green eyes, and Beauty is the pretty little long-haired tabby with the white bib. She’s a flirty little so-and-so and fairly simpers whenever Big Black Solomon or Felix is near. I bet she will have the next litter.’
‘How do you know them all?’ said Mil. ‘We just kept them as mousers and they seemed a pretty scruffy lot to me. Although I didn’t see them often, I must admit. Do you spend much time in the barn, dear?’
‘Of course not,’ I said, ‘but they are becoming more affectionate because I am giving them a bit of love and attention.’ I didn’t dare to say I allowed them into the house if Mrs Stow wasn’t looking. ‘Poor Catty is a bit scruffy – she’s the very thin tortoiseshell who won’t allow anyone near her.’
‘But she still has a name,’ said Mil, with a smile. I nodded.
‘Well, let me know when the next kittens arrive,’ she said, ‘and I might as well take one off your hands.’
I think she likes me better now and I learnt quite a bit of gossip from her. Apparently Betty’s husband drinks.
I was very surprised. Jim Folder was August’s best man but the wedding is such a blur I can scarcely remember him. A small man, I think, certainly smaller than August, but I don’t remember anything else about him.
I haven’t seen him yet on the farm, but Betty’s so sweet and friendly and Jerry’s a poppet, I would never have thought there was an unhappy secret lurking in their lives. She has ridden up several times now after lunch. We like to avoid Mrs Stow so we can talk amongst ourselves. But Betty’s never mentioned any problems with Jim. She has always come to me up till now but with Sky I’ll be able to go down and visit her at home sometimes, then maybe she’ll tell me more.
Mil said Jim Folder isn’t an alcoholic, or anything dreadful like that, but he goes to The Boar’s Head most evenings, leaving Betty at home with Jerry.
I’m so glad August doesn’t drink. I couldn’t bear to be alone every evening as well as during the day. What a selfish and unthinking man Jim must be. I’m not sure if I want to meet him now. I might say something I shouldn’t and, as Mil says, everybody likes Jim and August couldn’t manage without him. It’s a bit like Dairyman Nick. Why are unpleasant people liked by so many and so necessary?
The second intriguing thing I learnt was about that snake-eyed Jean. Jean Tilverton is her full name. She was August’s girlfriend and they were going steady until he came up to London for that show and met me – ravishing Honey Brown!
Mil says everyone was astonished when they heard he’d taken up with a dancer and discarded that nice young schoolteacher.
Or is that just Mil dropping a tiny bit of poison in my ear?
It would explain why old Snake-Eyes dislikes me. But August can’t have been much in love with her if he threw her over just like that. And they weren’t actually engaged. I did ask him once if he’d had many girlfriends before me and he said, ‘No one important’. He admitted he’d been out with a couple of local girls on occasion but was never in love with anyone until I came into his life.
I would feel sorry for Jean if she hadn’t shown her dislike so plainly. If she could have accepted me, come across at that ‘do’ and had a few words with me like Betty did, I would have really tried to make friends with her. But perhaps that wouldn’t have worked. Can a ‘has been’ ever be bosom pals with a ‘here and now’?
Nurse Dickinson has rooms in the village. Her fiancé was killed in a car crash two years ago and she’s only a few years older than me but looks much older. Poor girl, no wonder she’s a bit abrupt and hard. How can she meet another young man around here? They were very much in love, Mil says, and Lydia Dickinson was a far warmer, softer creature before the tragedy.
She was all right in the car when she gave me a lift home but not exactly chatty. Maybe I should invite her to tea. Though I don’t suppose she has much time for that. Perhaps she could pop in on her way to see a patient. I wonder if she and Betty get on. I could ask them together.
Mil also told me that she’s going up to London on Saturday. She’s meeting an old friend for lunch and they’re going to a matinée of The King’s Rhapsody.
For a moment my heart gave an extra thump as I remembered Henry saying, ‘You’d make a splendid understudy for Vanessa Lee, Honey – need singing lessons, of course, but …’
How I love that artificial world of bright lights and gaudy costumes and loud music! And how I miss that world I left behind to marry my farmer. The comfort of the buzzing dressing room, the friendship of the other girls, all the excitement and warmth of a show….
No, Honey, no.
I had to get up then and go and make myself a cup of coffee but I’m back now as there’s still lots more to put down.
I did wonder a bit how I would feel if Mil ever asked me to go with her.
I could tolerate her on the journey up, and on the journey back, but all day? She does talk a lot. Finding out about folk down here in the village is fun, but continuous small talk for hours on end would be very irritating. But she wouldn’t talk right through a show, would she? In the interval, I suppose, but there’d be some respite once it all began. Perhaps we could travel up to Victoria together and then go our separate ways? I could go to the Windmill and see the girls again – and meet Henry for lunch.
No, definitely not.
‘Give London my love,’ I said, before leaving her, and feeling all goose-pimply and nostalgic inside.
It is not the right time to go back. Not yet. It would be too unsettling and I might not want to return to the farm.
A few more months of clean air and cats, Mrs Stow’s cooking, and Betty and Jerry, and Sky are needed. Then I’ll go back and be horrified by all the noise and rush and smuts of the city, and be glad to catch the next train back to Sussex.
Perhaps.
Now, now, no more melancholy … On my way home I picked some bluebells. I’d seen them through the trees when I went down to the village and couldn’t resist them. I thought a great vase of them on the kitchen table would please August when he came in.
Oh dear, that was another mistake. Bluebells don’t last as cut flowers. They are gorgeous growing in the woods – they look like a blue lake under the trees – but don’t ever pick them. They wilt immediately and collapse in a forlorn sack.
I felt such a fool when Mrs Stow laughed at me as if I should have known, and to make matters worse there was a strange bike propped up against the kitchen wall.
Mrs Stow gave me a queer kind of look when she had stopped laughing and said, ‘A visitor for you, duck.’
I dumped the dead bluebells into the compost bucket and went through into the hall in a foul mood. I did not feel like being polite to anyone and thought it might be Mrs Dawson. It wasn’t. It was old Snake-Eyes and she was coming down the stairs.
What the hell had she been doing up there?
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ she said, all cool and slithery. ‘Only I lent August a book some time ago and wanted it back. No one was here but Mrs Stow knows me and said I could look for it.’
There was nothing in her hands.
‘Did you expect to find it under his pillow?’ I said, furious that she had been nosing around upstairs in our private world.
She went red.
‘I looked on the bookshelves in the dining room and as it wasn’t there I thought it might be on a shelf upstairs.’
I sat down, seething.
‘If you care to wait, no doubt August will find it for you and invite you to stay to lunch.’
She slid towards the front door.
‘Thank you, but I must get back. School lunch is at one.’
‘Then you’d better go out through the kitchen. You’ll waste another ten minutes trying to get that door open.’
She had to walk past me as I remained seated, and her head was high. I also heard her answering Mrs Stow quite curtly as she went out through the back door.
What right had she to come snooping round my house when my back was turned? Book? August never had time to read. Then Mrs Stow appeared in the doorway and she was also red in the face, but it might have been from the oven.
‘Sorry about that, duck. I hope I did right but she was so determined when she arrived I didn’t feel it was my place to refuse her entry.’
‘That’s all right, Mrs Stow,’ I said. ‘You were only doing your duty.’
Then I went upstairs to see if that creature had disturbed anything. It all seemed normal. We always leave the bedroom doors open so she could easily have peered into our room and seen how we sleep – pah!
To cheer myself up this evening, when August went out on his last round, I did my roots.
I do hate peroxide. It makes such a mess of your hands and skin, leaving them all white and wrinkly. But it does the job for my hair and I’m now all blonde and beautiful again. Wish Henry could see me – he would really appreciate me.
Never mind, I’ve got the bottle now so there’s enough for several more sessions and I also got some Kotex whilst I was at the chemist. Good old Sky. At least I have some independence….