Dennis Hawthorne wasn’t a man to let his spirits be cast down easily, but as he closed the door of that dingy office and came into the bright sunshine his future held no ray of hope. This wasn’t the dream that had kept him going through those hellish years of the war. Yet he ought to be thankful – he was thankful. Thousands of men who had lost their lives in the stinking trenches would jump at the offer he’d just turned down. But he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, waste the glories of the life that had been spared to him in that miserable, gloomy shed that called itself an office. Look across the harbour to the open sea, listen to the cries of the gulls as they circled an incoming fishing boat . . . Then without warning the scene before him seemed to be wiped out by the vision that haunted him and, even now, more than a year since it had happened, all too often dragged him out of sleep to find himself trembling, sweating, sometimes crying like a child. There by the harbour, the May morning was overtaken by the scene of his nightmare. He was shivering despite the palms of his hands being clammy; he felt the sweat break on his brow. He was climbing out of the trench, charging into no-man’s-land, then the sound of the explosion seemed to be bursting in his head and he saw Ted Turner blown to pieces only yards from him. Ted Turner who had been his friend since they started infant school on the same day. Now instinctively he raised his shaking hand and wiped his forehead, making a supreme effort to appear normal, standing there amongst the dock workers.
‘You all right, son?’ a kindly voice asked.
‘Yes, I’m fine. Just so bright coming out from that dark shed.’
‘Ah, give me the fresh air, no matter what the weather chucks at you. Been in there to see the old man about the job, have you?’
Dennis looked at the stranger with the kindly voice, a man more than twice his age. ‘You work for him?’ he asked.
‘Ah, I work here on the dock, loading. I saw the notice in the paper for a bookkeeper. Did you get taken on?’
‘I turned it down. I did right, I know I did. But God knows how long before I find anything. Couldn’t do it though, couldn’t be stuck in that dark hovel.’
‘You home from the army I s’pose. A land fit for heroes, that’s what you boys were promised. Tell you one thing, though, lad. Nothing in this world is ever what you dream it will be; but there’s usually something good to be found if we look for it – a mate to work alongside, someone to have a joke with. You’ll find the right thing, mayhap it’s just around the next corner, eh?’
Dennis’s bad moment had passed and with the stranger’s optimistic comment echoing in his mind, he started up Quay Hill to catch the bus back to Exeter where he rented a bed-sitting room. Yes, he’d done right to refuse. He was still free and like that chap had said, something good might be just around the next corner. Reality caught up with him when he joined the end of the queue waiting at the bus stop, for nearby was a man no more than his own twenty-one years, a man propped up on crutches with one empty trouser leg pinned up, and attached to a cord around his neck was a tray with boxes of matches. Dennis dug in his pocket for a penny and bought a box just as the Exeter bus drew up.
Two women laden with shopping baskets got on first, then with a smile and, ‘Good luck, mate’, to the match seller, he followed.
The bus was taking a long country route back to Exeter. It was only about midday and the thought of his bed-sitting room held no appeal. What was there to hurry for? When a couple of women got up to disembark in a village, he followed them, his nose immediately being assailed by the smell of fish and chips. So it was that with his lunch wrapped in a greasy newspaper package he turned from the village street in what he was to come to know as Sedgewood and started to walk down a narrow lane, which was signed: To the Common.
About a quarter of a mile on he came face to face with his future. No longer was it shrouded in impenetrable mist. On a garden gate was a faded sign: COTTAGE AND ABOUT FIVE ACRES TO LET. The cottage stood empty, looking unloved and desolate with its painted name, Westways, so faded it was barely readable. But it wasn’t the cottage that set his imagination racing, it was the land; five acres as sadly neglected as the building itself. It was like stumbling upon something held in a time warp. This was his future: Dennis had never felt as certain of anything. Pushing open the gate that hung on one hinge he walked up the weed-choked path and pressed his nose to the windows of the house. He battled his way through the overgrown land, imagining the hours he would spend restoring it. Hours? Weeks, months, he corrected himself. He remembered how he used to love to work with his grandfather on his vegetable plot and, casting a glance to the pale winter sky, wanted to believe that his decision was gaining approval.
There was no time to loose. He jotted down the name of the agent and caught the next bus back to Deremouth. By the end of the day his future had a shape: he would breathe new life into these five acres of south Devon countryside and make the house a home. Long ago someone else must have lived there, tilling the land, caring for the property, and that’s how it would be again.
That was in May. He became the tenant on the first of June, and before that he had to attend an auction sale in Exeter and bid for the bare essentials of furniture. He took note of every penny he spent, for he had little enough to live on and he knew it would be some time before the land could bring him any income. But there were things he had to have: gardening tools (all bought second-hand) and his one extravagance, a motorized digger. But he had plenty of clearing to do before he could hope to use that.
That summer he worked outside seven days a week from first light until dusk. His scheme was to clear and plant out one patch at a time. That way by the time the winter crops came along he ought to be making some sort of a living. He found time to go to the village, to make friends with the shopkeepers and get the greengrocer’s word that he would be prepared to take his crop assuming that it was of high enough quality.
During the winter evenings he distempered the inside walls. A stranger seeing it would have thought his home a barren and cheerless place, but to Dennis it was an object of pride. The rooms were small, a kitchen-cum-sitting room, a ‘parlour’ or dining room, then upstairs two bedrooms. Outside on the back wall of the cottage he kept a zinc bath, which he had to bring indoors and fill with water heated in buckets on the range. A few yards from the cottage was an earth closet. After his years in the trenches, to Dennis it all seemed like luxury and, in the beginning, even the solitude was balm to his spirit. Surely if anything could dispel the memories that tormented him it must be the work he did on the land.
For the first two years he worked alone; paying a helper’s wage was out of the question. Bit by bit the ground was cleared, the earth turned with his motor digger and then planted. So often he sent up a silent thank you to his grandfather who had died during the war years and had left to Dennis what little money he had. Living frugally he survived, learnt to look after himself and gradually to eke out a living from his land.
It was in the summer of 1922 that something happened to change his future. Each day he delivered his boxes of vegetable to Jack Hopkins, the village greengrocer, in a handcart. With the delivery made he was just pushing his cart back along the track towards Westways when he saw a girl trying to put the chain back on her bicycle. Sometimes people from the village walked this way, taking the track that led to the common. But he’d never seen this girl before. She probably wasn’t local, he decided, for from her attire he imagined she had been on a long cycle ride. Wearing grey flannel pleated shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt she might have been no more than a schoolgirl – or that was his impression until he came nearer.
‘Do you need a hand?’ he called as he approached her.
‘I don’t know what’s the matter with it today. Three times the chain has come off. It’s never done it before. I think I’ve got it on and half a mile along the road it’s slipped again.’
‘Perhaps something needs tightening. Have you a tool bag?’
‘No – just two hands. And oily ones at that,’ she answered cheerfully.
She had turned the bike upside down and had been crouching by its side to fix it. Now she stood up and he saw immediately that he’d been wrong in thinking her a schoolgirl. She was a young woman, and an attractive young woman too. At a quick glance he took her in from head to toe. His first thought was that her hair reminded him of autumn and conkers; to say it was brown made it sound ordinary but it wasn’t really auburn. She was very slim, yet he was aware of her breasts under the thin cotton of her open neck blouse. Her long slender legs were bare and on her feet she wore a pair of strapped sandals little different from those of a child. Yet she certainly wasn’t a child; if she were, her long hair would have been in a pigtail instead of being swept up and pinned to the top of her head. And her face? If he thought of the picture stars of the day who were considered beautiful, then she was no beauty for there was nothing ‘rosebud’ about her mouth. Her cheekbones were pronounced and her nose tip-tilted. Yet her wide dark eyes were like no eyes he had ever seen.
Aware that she’d seen how he was staring at her he felt raw and gauche. ‘If you like, I’ll take a look at it for you.’ Once more he was in control. ‘I live just along there in that cottage.’ Then, unable to keep the pride out of his voice, he added, ‘This field here, well, I say field but it’s a market garden really, it’s mine. I’ve just been out delivering the veg to the shop in the village.’
‘You grow all that?’ She spoke in awed admiration just as he’d hoped she would. ‘Do you reckon you can fix it so that I can get back to Exeter? I’d be awfully grateful.’
He liked her more and more. Some girls would have looked on him with suspicion because he suggested she should go home with him. But not this one. She had bags of common sense; he knew it immediately. As she bent to up-end her bike, he picked it up and laid it on his cart.
‘I’ve been cycling all day,’ she told him as they started along the lane, speaking as if she’d known him for years. ‘It was really exciting, all of it new to me. I’ve only been in Exeter for a fortnight and my day off last week was wet.’
‘You’ve taken a job in Exeter? What do you do?’
‘A sort of general bit of this and bit of that. When I left school I was needed at home so I’ve never trained for anything. All I really know is looking after a house and cooking – that sort of thing. I work for an elderly couple, brother and sister. Dear old things they are. They have a housekeeper, so you could call me a housemaid except that I do other things. Sometimes I read to the old dears. Neither of them can see well enough to read for themselves and they like to keep abreast with the daily news. I like doing that, because that way I get to read the paper too. I do the mending and the ironing, I go out shopping. Yesterday I made twelve pots of jam. Like I say, I just do whatever comes along. Not being trained for anything, really, I was lucky to get taken on.’
‘I reckon they’re the lucky ones having you there to look after them. So where have you been today?’
‘I didn’t have a map so it’s hard to say. One place I went to was called Otterton St Giles – that was about the furthest I suppose. That’s where I ate my sandwiches. Then to a bigger place, Deremouth, this side of the estuary. When it was time to start for home I followed a sign that said Exeter but got sidetracked at the end of the lane here when I read this was the way ‘To the Common’. I shouldn’t have attempted it, not with all these ruts in the track. I expect that’s what got my chain off again. It was fine all the way from that Deremouth place.’
‘We’ll soon get it fixed. Here we are, in you go.’ He held the gate open for her then followed her with the cart. ‘Do you want to wait in the house while I see what I can do? My toolbox is in the shed over there.’
‘I’d rather come and watch you, just in case I have trouble another time – unless your wife or your mother or someone is in there and will think it rude of me.’
‘I have neither wife nor mother. I live on my own.’ Then with a ring of pride, he added, ‘And I work on my own too, can’t afford any help yet. But it’s all coming along really well. When I’ve done the bike I’ll show you what I grow if you like.’
She nodded, her wide mouth beaming with pleasure. ‘I’d like that.’
It was more than an hour later that he walked with her to the end of the lane and saw her on her way. He’d wanted to ask her to come to Sedgewood again next time she had a day off and it didn’t rain, but he was frightened to suggest it in case she refused. So all he said was, ‘I work here on my own all the time. If you’re ever this way drop in and say hello.’
‘May I? I don’t want to be a nuisance when you’ve got masses to do. Or perhaps you could give me some jobs. Remember I’m good at doing a bit of this and a bit of that.’
‘Come soon, won’t you.’ The words were out before he could stop them.
‘Just try and stop me! By the way, what’s your name? I’m Kathie Barnes.’
‘And I’m Dennis Hawthorne. Just Den does me.’
‘Bye then, Den. If it’s not chucking it down on us next week I’ll ride over. But you must promise you’ll tell me if you’re too busy. I won’t mind, honestly.’
He promised. But secretly they both knew that the days between then and her next free time were simply hours to be lived through.
Until the day he had chanced on Kathie, his own company had been all he’d wanted. His three years at Westways had calmed his shattered nerves, even dimmed some of the memories that would never be erased; solitude had become a habit and he was never lonely. Then meeting Kathie changed everything.
The following week he took her into the cottage, giving her the Grand Tour of the sparsely furnished rooms with their distempered walls. He even pointed out the zinc bath and the outside closet, not as features to be despised but as an accepted part of the ambience. And viewing it all, her eyes shone with admiration; there he was, a young, strong, good-looking man, thoroughly self-reliant.
As the weeks went by, each time she had her day off she cycled from the house near Exeter to Sedgewood. It would have taken more than rain to deter her, in fact she liked wet days when instead of working on the land they were in the cottage. She cooked their lunch – making sure she did enough that he had something he could warm up for supper or for the next day. For both of them, her visits were the highlight of their week. He knew so little about girls. Being with her made him aware of what a loner he had become. Most of his army compatriots had gone home to wives or girlfriends, but he’d had neither. If he’d had a sedentary job (like the one in that dingy shed by the harbour) he would have looked for female company in the evenings. Most nights when he went to bed he was too tired to miss the thing that was lacking in his life. Yet he was a normal, healthy young man and often enough his sleep would be disturbed by something he couldn’t control. Knowing nothing of the realities of shared love making, even his fantasies lacked direction. All that changed when Kathie came into his life. He would find himself watching her as she reached to pick the first of the runner beans, aware that on these warm summer days she wore nothing under her cotton blouse and imagining how her small breasts would feel if only he could hold them in the palms of his hands. Then his hand might move down her flat stomach, force its way between her slender thighs, he would . . .
‘What’s up?’ she said, turning unexpectedly from her task. Then, suddenly uncertain, ‘Are you all right, Den? You look sort of funny.’
‘Kathie, I was thinking.’
‘Oh dear! Do you always look funny when you think?’ she teased.
‘Kathie, I’ve never felt like this before. Is this what being in love does to you?’
‘In love?’ It was barely a whisper.
The runner beans were forgotten as he came close to her and held her hands tightly in his. ‘Can’t think of anything but you. I want you as part of my life – all of my life – working together, living together. Kathie, what is it? Don’t cry, Kathie.’
‘Can’t help it. So happy.’ As the tears spilled from her brimming eyes, she forced her contorted face into a smile. ‘Hold me tight, Den.’
Clinging to each other they knew complete happiness. With all the innocence of youth they saw their futures as cloudless; if they had each other nothing could touch them.
‘You’re only eighteen. Who has to give permission for you to marry?’
‘My mother.’ It came as a surprise to him that she had a relative as close as a mother. She never spoke of her family. ‘She lives in Hampshire. My father died when I was just a kid but Mum and I were fine, he left enough money for us to live on. I don’t mean we were rich, but she never had to worry and the house was our own. I was still at school when she met Cyril Harper, a photographer. She fell for him. She behaved as if she were less than half her age. Anyway, it was stupid; we were quite all right as we were. But they got married and he came to live in our house. He decided I was old enough to leave school and help at home. I was no more than a glorified maid in the house – not even a glorified one if I’m truthful. Mother got pregnant as soon as they were married and the next thing I was expected to be nursemaid too. Algy was a good little chap I suppose, but I resented always having to look after him, wash his nappies, everything. But Mother was intent on giving beastly Cyril everything he wanted. Before Algy was a year old she had her next, a girl they called Lily. That was back in January. I made up my mind I was going to get a job. Then with Lily only a few weeks old, Mother and her wretched man were pleased as punch because she recognized the signs; hardly up and about from Lily, she was pregnant again. They seem to want to breed like rabbits and they’re not even young. Mother is forty and he’s even more. It’s disgusting.’ She almost spat the word out.
Dennis looked at her tenderly, thinking not so much about her mother’s second chance at happiness as about the hurt he knew Kathie felt.
‘But they’re happy together?’
‘If being happy means that she gazes at him like some moonstruck youngster and talks a lot of drivel about getting pregnant so easily being proof that they are made for each other. It was as if she couldn’t think of anything else. It was as if he’d cast a sort of spell on her. I didn’t want to hear about it. They’re old, for goodness sake! It’s revolting. Anyway I saw this job in the newspaper and wrote about it, then the next thing I knew I had a letter saying they wanted me to work for them. They’re a nice old couple – Mr and Miss Blackwell. They pay me ten shillings a week and my keep – it was going to be seven and sixpence but on my first pay day Mr Blackwell said they had had a little chat and decided to give me ten shillings.’ She had talked fast, speaking her thoughts aloud. ‘Heavens! Hark at me! Once I get started there’s no stopping me.’
‘I love you Kathie Barnes. I want to know everything – about your past, about your thoughts . . .’
‘And my future?’
‘And your future . . . every day of our lives, darling Kathie. And if what your mother says is true we shall have an army of children to help us on the land.’
She chuckled, nuzzling her head against his neck.
‘I’ll write to Mother this evening and tell her about us. I’ll say we want to be married and ask for her consent. She’ll give it right enough. She’s so besotted with that pompous prick of a man that she’s probably forgotten I exist at all.’
Dennis laughed at the sudden change in her tone.
‘We’ll be so happy that no one will have the power to trouble us. I ought to have proposed to you in the time honoured way, on one knee vowing my endless love—’
‘And all that jazz,’ she sang. Then meeting his gaze her expression suddenly changed again. Excitement gave way to an emotion that seemed to take her breath away. ‘Den, hold me close.’ She had never been kissed like this; her heart was pounding and following her natural impulse her lips parted and she moved her tongue on his mouth. For Dennis, too, this was a new experience. Often enough when he’d woken in the silence of the night he had imagined her as he followed where nature led. But that was as nothing compared with the reality of holding her.
‘Your hand,’ she whispered with her mouth touching his. And the next thing he knew she guided him to press it against her small, pert breast, her own hand covering his and moving his fingers backwards and forwards across the pinnacle of her nipple.
‘No, Kathie,’ he spoke more to himself than to her. ‘Kathie, I want to touch you, every bit of you. Oh God, but I want you.’
She felt him pull his hand from her breast and moved her own with it, so that as he lowered his she still held it and together they raised her skirt then guided him to the wide leg of her knickers. Never before had he hated the narrow life he’d led as he hated it now. On leave in France he had been with some of his compatriots to what were thought of as ‘naughty’ shows, but never had he seen a naked woman and never had his hand explored as it did as Kathie stood close against him with one leg wrapped around him. As his finger probed he drew back his head and looked at Kathie; her eyes were closed, her lips parted and as she breathed she made a soft whimpering sound. She was as inexperienced and naïve as he was, but she wasn’t ignorant. With her eyes still closed she moved the hand that had lead him to his goal and eased it into the waist of his trousers. He gave a shuddering sigh as he felt it close around him.
‘Kathie, no, Kathie, no.’ Then, unable to stop himself, he continued, ‘Yes, go on, harder, harder, oh God, coming . . . can’t stop it.’ With a convulsive movement he leant heavily on her as she felt the warm fluid on her hand, bringing her closer to filling the gaps in her knowledge and understanding. ‘So sorry . . . tried not to . . .’
‘I’m glad it happened. Den, I love you so much.’ They had moved apart, her skirt fallen back into place and her hand retrieved. But the moment still held them; they weren’t ready to let it go. He passed her his handkerchief to wipe her hand; they didn’t look directly at each other. For both of them the last minutes had been a journey of discovery.
‘How soon can we get married?’ she asked. ‘We don’t have to save up for a silly honeymoon or anything, do we? And working in the garden here I shan’t want a trousseau of posh clothes.’
‘Before you go, give me your mother’s name and address. I’ll write to her this evening.’
‘You, not me?’
‘You can write as well if you want, of course you can. But I must ask her permission. And she’ll want to know something about me.’ Then with a sudden and boyish grin, he added, ‘What a fine upstanding young fella I am.’
‘What about your people? Not for permission, but they ought to know what sort of a girl you’re tying yourself up to.’
‘I’ve told you about Grandad dying while I was in France. He was all the family I had. I can’t remember my parents; they were killed in a train crash when I was about three. They’d been on an outing with the church choir they both sang in. Grandad brought me up.’
‘Oh Den, how sad for you.’ But she’d make it up a hundredfold all that he’d missed.
‘Now look here, this is no way to waste good daylight hours.’ The last minutes were like a dream, but now reality was catching up with him. ‘If you finish cutting and boxing up the calabrese, I’ll get the handcart across and we’ll push off down to the village. I’ve got carrots and spinach boxed up ready. I say, what a team, eh?’
They were restored to their usual friendly footing.
That evening they each wrote to Millicent, neither knowing exactly what the other had told her. The days went by and there was no reply. By Kathie’s next day off they didn’t try to hide their disappointment. Secretly Dennis had hoped that the news would have brought about a return to the earlier closeness between mother and daughter.
‘Den, would we be able to afford to keep a pig when we’re married? Mrs Hutchins, she’s the cook where I work, she’s been making brawn and I helped her. She’s taught me so much; every week there’s something different. I know how to make preserves, and bottle fruit and vegetables. It’s going to be such fun. But about the pig, she said that when she was a girl her people always reared one for the table. You don’t have to kill it yourself, you send it to be done and it comes back in joints, chops, and all sorts of things. We could barter in the village – a whole ham would be worth, oh I don’t know, perhaps curtains for the sitting room or something. It’s just that I don’t know if we could afford to buy a piglet.’
‘It’s all extra work, Kathie.’
‘I’d look after it. And think of all the edible bits you put on the compost heap every day when you prepare the vegetables to take to the shop. Once I’m here all the time I could cook it all up and make it appetizing for the lucky chap.’
‘You’re a glutton for work, young Kathie.’
Her chuckle was a sign of the contentment she felt. ‘Work is something you get paid to do for someone else. What we do here isn’t like work; the more we do, the more established Westways becomes. And Westways will be us. Listen, Den, there’s a motor coming down the lane. If they’re trying to go to the common they’ll have to reverse all the way back.’
‘It’s stopping, whoever it is must be going to turn by our double gate.’
But they were both wrong. A minute later they heard the click of the garden gate leading to the front door of the cottage.
‘I’d better go and see,’ Den said, wiping his hands on his overalls.
Humming to herself, Kathie continued trimming the main crop carrots, letting her mind leap forward to when she would be turning the vegetable trimmings into pigswill.
‘Kathie!’ At the sound she stood bolt upright.
‘Mother!’ Her pretty mother! But she had never looked like this when she’d been expecting Algy or Lily. ‘Mother, how did you know I’d be here? Have you been to see the Blackwells?’
‘I wanted to see for myself what sort of a man it is you want to marry.’
Kathie’s eyes filled with hot tears. Her mother still cared! Throwing down her knife, then laying the carrot on the pile, she hurried to hurl herself at Millicent.
‘Careful Kathie, don’t knock me off my feet.’
‘You look as though it would take a mighty great push to do that,’ Kathie laughed. ‘How long have you got to wait?’
‘If I got pregnant when I think I did, I’m due in six weeks.’
‘You look like the cat who stole the cream.’ Kathie found her old irritation surfacing.
‘That’s how I feel. I know I’m huge, but there’s good reason. This time the doctor tells me he believes it’s twins.’
‘Four children! Are you all right? You’re not young.’ She didn’t mean it as unkindly as it sounded.
‘I wish I were. I wish I were twenty instead of forty. But years have nothing to do with anything. I feel young – and a thousand times happier and more loved than I did at twenty. Kathie, I wish you were living near us. Soon you’ll be a wife and there’s so much we could share. But just one thing: when your young man wrote he said you both want the wedding very soon, as soon as possible. Was he trying to tell me that you’d been doing things you shouldn’t?’
‘Things we shouldn’t?’
‘Shouldn’t before you’re married, I mean. You know I’ve said before that when two people are right together there is nothing easier or more natural than to make a baby. And in my opinion it’s a gift from God whether it’s before you’re married or after. So you can tell me, Kathie, you mustn’t be frightened.’
‘No, you’re wrong – about us I mean.’ Then, laughing and encompassing the five-acre field with a grand sweep of her arm, she explained, ‘With all this to look after we have too much to do on my day off to spend time “doing what we shouldn’t”.’
‘Oh dear, don’t be like your father. He was never interested in that sort of thing; sometimes I wonder how I conceived you at all. When he did rise to the occasion it was such a passionless performance. The only passion he knew was for the bones and treasures to be dug up of people who’d been dead for hundreds of years; the nights I’ve cried myself to sleep! Then after he died, I had to wait all those achingly lonely years. No wonder I fell in love with Cyril. The first time we talked I just knew that with him – well, I seemed to read his thoughts just as he read mine. I do wish you’d liked him better; you were always so scratchy to him.’ Then, changing the subject, her voice alive with excitement, she continued, ‘Did you hear us arrive? We drove. We’ve had such an exciting summer since Cyril has bought a motor cycle and sidecar.’ Like a child she giggled. ‘Not much space in a sidecar. If I get much bigger he’ll have to get me in and out with a shoehorn. Let’s go and find the men. I left him to have a talk with your young man. Then there’s something else we want to tell you. Oh Kathie, who would have thought that life could be so . . . so thrilling?’
‘And you’ll write a letter giving me your consent to marry?’
‘Oh but I’ve done that already. We brought it with us. Cyril has it in his pocket. If you think he’s right for you then I’m sure he must be. You’re a sensible girl – too sensible I sometimes think, too much of your father in you – but I’m sure you wouldn’t lose your heart to someone who was no good. Wait until we are all together, then Cyril has some news for you.’
Kathie and Cyril greeted each other with cool courtesy, but on that occasion Millicent was too eager for his announcement to notice.
‘We wish you both well for your future together. And I must say –’ Cyril addressed his words to Dennis – ‘Millicent will have no worries leaving Kathie with you, certain that she will be in good hands. When do you hope to be married?’
‘We haven’t even talked about dates yet,’ Kathie answered him. ‘I don’t see there’s any reason to wait, do you, Den?’
‘Today would suit me fine,’ Dennis laughed, ‘but I imagine your mother would prefer we wait until after the birth.’
‘I hardly look like mother of the bride.’ Millicent cradled her enormous hump in both hands, smiling at Cyril as if to acknowledge the part he’d played. ‘But you can have a wedding without me being there. I’ve written my consent; Cyril will leave it with you. As soon as I’m about again after shedding my load – well you tell them Cyril darling.’
He came to her and put his arm around her and just like a teenager in the throes of first love she gazed at him in open adoration.
‘We are leaving the country,’ he announced. ‘As soon as Millicent is ready for the journey we are moving out to California. I have a friend with a most successful photographic studio, he is renowned for his portraits – well-known people in the world of moving pictures sit for him. He knows my work well and he has written suggesting that I take over the Californian studio as he means to open in New York. High society will flock to him; he is able to flatter even the plainest. Indeed my own work is very similar to his, but my clientele very different. I shall never reach the top of my profession where I am now. We have a buyer for the house so by the time the legal work is all completed the timing should be right. So we are off, we two, the new nursemaid is coming with us and by then the four children to keep her busy. Any more family we have will be born American. Isn’t that so, my precious?’
Millicent nodded, moving his arm down and pressing his hand to the hump she carried with such pride.
Dennis said all the right things, congratulating Cyril, wishing them every happiness in their venture. But Kathie said nothing. Just for those first moments with her mother their old closeness seemed to be unchanged, but it had been an illusion. Already she was forgotten.
‘Can you stay and eat with us?’ Dennis invited. ‘We always have something around teatime so that Kathie can cycle back to Exeter before it’s dark.’
‘No, we’ll get on our way. I have the letter here that Millie has written. She did it before we left home so that she could see you had it safely. And now my darling we’ll say our farewells. We have a long drive ahead of us. We’ll find somewhere for a meal when we get most of the journey behind us.’
Five minutes later, making a great thing of what a tight squeeze it was to fit her bulk into the sidecar, Millicent blew a final kiss as Cyril started the motor. Then without a backward glance they were off.
‘America’s such a long way. Don’t expect she’ll ever come back.’ Kathie heard her voice break as she blinked back the tears.
‘No. It’ll be a different world for them. And so will ours be different for us.’
Kathie nodded, forcing a smile. ‘You get the cart and I’ll finish the carrots or we shan’t get them delivered in time for us to have tea before I have to start back. Now we’ve got the letters Den what is there for us to wait for?’
‘Good girl.’ He didn’t enlarge on exactly why she was a good girl. ‘Hey, Kathie, I reckon we ought to add something to our vows: that as we get older we won’t let ourselves get . . . get . . . well, soppy, lovey-dovey.’
Kathie started to laugh. ‘I’ll finish the carrots.’ Five minutes later they were pushing the loaded cart along the lane towards the village street. The brief and unsettling interlude with their visitors had left no scars.
It wasn’t until they sat down to the bacon and egg tea Kathie cooked for them that she opened the bulky envelope her mother had left. Even then it wasn’t the letter that gave her such a look of blank amazement.
‘What’s up, Kathie? Hasn’t she made it clear?’
‘The consent’s fine. She’s written something else. Here, you read it.’
Kathie watched as Dennis took out the contents she had crammed back into the envelope, his expression one of incredulity.
‘Fifty pounds! Did she tell you what was in the envelope?’
‘Not a word.’ This time she couldn’t blink back the tears that welled in her eyes. ‘It had always been my home. That’s what she says. Even with Cyril there, she didn’t forget it was my home. I feel so mean – about them both. She’s so besotted with him that if he’d told her he wanted her to keep all the money for themselves – and setting up fresh in America, I’m sure they can do with it – she would have done what he said. So he must have agreed to what she was doing. Fifty pounds! Can’t believe it.’
That same night, sitting up in bed she wrote to her mother, saying things she could never have been comfortable saying to her face and, above all, begging her not to let them become forced apart by the miles.
That was in September.
Kathie and Dennis were married in the village church on the first Saturday in November. The only people present were the Blackwell siblings, who had insisted they wanted to be there and had promised to sign the register as witnesses. So instead of making the journey on her bicycle, Kathie arrived at the church in style in the Blackwells’ car with her bike and two suitcases roped to the luggage grid on the back. Only after the ceremony was the rope untied and her worldly possessions stacked against the wall of the churchyard. Then the car moved off, leaving the bridal couple at the church gate.
‘I must have a guardian angel, Den. When I looked for a job it guided me to them. I shall really miss them.’ She’d known the Blackwells for hardly more than seven months but their simple kindness would stay with her. Waving until the car rounded the bend at the end of the village street, she and Dennis set out for home, he carrying a suitcase in each hand while she pushed the bicycle.
‘I should have insisted we at least had a weekend away. Kathie, you deserve something better than this. You ought to be wearing white and carrying flowers, not pushing your bike back home. You deserve a honeymoon in a first-class hotel.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ came her spontaneous answer, ‘that would just be a waste of time. We’d be itching to get home and start a proper life. Don’t you think that most couples grasp at the chance of a honeymoon just to get away by themselves; but we never have family listening and watching what we do and say. Now, Den, we shall have all day, every day.’
‘Every day and every night.’
They turned from the road into their lane that led to the common. Silently Dennis imagined the hours ahead of them, silently he begged that he would manage to do it right, right for both of them. Tonight he mustn’t rush at her and bungle the whole thing. She was as much a novice as he. She wouldn’t be shy, of that he was certain, but she wouldn’t be any more knowledgeable than he was. Together they’d find the way.
‘Let’s do that, shall we?’ He’d been so lost in his own thoughts he’d not listened to what she’d been saying.
‘Sorry, Kathie. I wasn’t listening, I was thinking about the sort of honeymoon I would like to have given you. Let’s do what?’
‘This evening, when we’ve finished outside, let’s get the bath in front of the fire. Not big enough for both of us at the same time unless we stand up. Can’t you just imagine, you and me standing in the water, lovely and warm, the curtains closed. Now what could a honeymoon give better than that? Mr and Mrs Hawthorne taking their first dip.’
Suddenly all his fears melted.
‘Come on –’ she tugged his arm in a most unbridelike fashion – ‘race you home.’ And she was off, pushing her bike – not cheating and riding it – and reaching her goal just ahead of him, propping the bicycle against the fence and leaning, breathless, on the gate.
‘I love you Kathie Hawthorne.’ At the sound of those softly spoken words her mood changed. With her lips parted she raised her mouth to his as he dumped the cases on the ground.
She had never lived without a bathroom and the novelty of the bathing ritual excited her. He filled two buckets with water and put them on the range, then an hour or so later he carried the bath in while she rolled away the rug in case it got splashed. She soon learnt that a four-foot zinc bath was hardly the setting for the eroticism she had half imagined – for more than half imagining was beyond her. With the buckets emptied into the bath, they undressed each other, the sight of her almost Dennis’s undoing. The moment was a big step for her too, for the sight of him was evidence of what she had only half understood despite their brief encounter with desire on the afternoon he had asked her to marry him. When she had encircled his warm flesh and been secretly thrilled that she had the power to make him lose control, she hadn’t imagined what she held to be as large and erect as what she now saw as he moved towards her.
This was a mistake, she thought. He wants us to make love, to do it, now. That’s what I want too . . . but not down here on a stone floor. The water looked temptingly steamy so she put one foot in, testing the temperature.
‘Lovely. Come on, Den, hop in.’ She scooped up the tablet of soap which, having no dish, was getting soft in the water. ‘I’ll do you first.’
They were on unknown territory, more exciting than anything they had dreamed. They rubbed the tablet of soap in their hands, and then lathered each other, not once but over and over until their hands slid over the surface of their skin. Even though they were still standing, the burning coals in the range kept them warm.
Reaching to where Kathie had put towels on the table, Den wrapped one loosely around her as without a word he stepped out of the bath and pulled the kitchen chair close. Then sitting on it he held out his arms.
‘Face me,’ he whispered, drawing her down to him. Following instinct, she sat astride him. She left dizzy with emotion, there was nothing but this, her damp body pressed close to his. Secretly they had both been frightened of failure, but now she knew exactly what she had to do as she guided him then lowered herself so that he penetrated deep into her. She had wondered and imagined, she had explored with a slender finger, expecting that when the moment came that would be what she would feel. But she hadn’t been prepared for this.
‘You’re deep inside me. It’s as if you fill me. Deeper, Den, harder.’ As she whispered, so she moved on him, lifting his hand so that his fingers caressed her telltale raised nipple. She had never known a feeling like this: joy beyond anything she had dreamed and yet she yearned for an elusive something that stayed just out of reach as with a stifled cry his climax came. In her innocence she didn’t know how near she had come to grasping that elusive something, but she felt weak and shaken with love.
‘Kathie,’ he gasped when at last his convulsive movements were stilled, ‘wonderful . . . God . . . never knew . . . could be so wonderful.’ He shivered, suddenly realizing that they were still wet and soapy.
Nuzzling against him she started to laugh. ‘What a pickle we’re in. We have to bale out the tub too. Oh Den, no one could have a better honeymoon than this.’
‘No one,’ he agreed.
‘You’re shivering. Best you hop back in that water and rinse the soap off. I ought to, too. If we stay soapy we shall get itchy.’
‘Love you, Kathie Hawthorne, my practical wife.’
Five minutes later, rinsed and rubbed vigorously with their towels, there was no choice but to be practical. Each with a saucepan they gradually baled out most of the water until holding one end each they were able to carry the bath outside and drain the last of it onto the patch of grass. With bare feet and their towels wrapped around them, it was a good thing they had no neighbours.
She fetched his pyjamas and her nightdress and dressing gown.
‘I couldn’t find your dressing gown,’ she said as she put the things on the kitchen table.
‘Now what would I want with a thing like that? I always go straight to bed once I’ve cleared away the bath.’
‘We’ll do that too in a minute, but first what do you want to drink, tea or cocoa?’
‘Cocoa, please. I say, don’t we sound married! Cocoa at bedtime.’
While she made the drinks he raked the fire in the range and banked it up for the night. Had she been as apprehensive as he had about how they’d manage the first time? Yet it had been so easy, so right – so wonderful. What a moment for that haunting vision to come back to him: no man’s land, shrieks and cries of the wounded, then the moment when he had seen Ted blown to bits. Poor bugger, no wife for him, no life, no kids to look forward to. And here am I with Kathie, with everything, our future ahead of us . . . I thank God from the bottom of my heart.
The clean sheets were cold (and unironed too, but at least he had washed them ready to bring his bride to), but it would have taken far more than a cold bed to mar their first night together. Sex had never played a paramount part in Dennis’s life; he had usually been too physically weary to give it much thought unless it woke him in the middle of the night. But, relieved at the success of their first encounter, he was as ready as any bridegroom and this time with better control.
‘I didn’t know it could be like that,’ Kathie spoke in an awed whisper when he moved off her. ‘Like climbing to the peak of a high mountain, stars shining and twinkling around you.’
She was utterly sure that they were right for each other. So if what her mother had said was true, perhaps already they had made the beginning of a baby.
‘Den,’ she whispered, ‘are you awake?’
‘Um . . .’ More truthfully he was half awake.
‘When two people are right for each other the easiest thing in the world is to conceive; that’s what my mother said. That’s why she keeps having babies. Do you suppose it’ll be like that for us?’
‘Hope so,’ he mumbled, consciousness fast slipping beyond recall. ‘Need all the help we can get – an army of sons to dig and . . .’ Dennis slept but she was wideawake, eager for the future. With all the confidence of youth she saw it as cloudless; tragedies were things that happened to other people.