The kitchen garden that afternoon
In the kitchen garden, Joan scratched at the hard soil with the little hand tool Mrs. Bastin had given her. A pail of potatoes sat on the path.
“I’d always thought that was the end product. Not the seed.”
Mrs. Bastin ignored her. She was on hands and knees, up to her chubby elbows in soil.
“What are those flat shrubs against the wall there?” Joan said.
The other woman swiped at a strand of hair as she looked up, leaving a smudge at her temple. “Peaches, trained up the stone.”
A peach couldn’t be had for love nor money. Joan’s mouth watered. Even onions, now that they were cut off from the islands and Spain, would be dear, and apples, but they would have them at Greenway. “When are the peaches ready to eat?”
Mrs. Bastin sighed, sat back on her heels. “July? As late as August.”
Looking into the trees, Joan caught the tail of a fleeting thought and let it drag her down. There is no guarantee of August.
Her nan would have said someone walked over her grave, a shiver up her spine like that. That’s all they were doing, wasn’t it? Walking over the graves of each other’s kin.
She dusted her gloves. “It’ll be here before we know it.” Maybe they would all be home by August. These peaches could rot in place and spoil the ground for all she cared.
Mrs. Bastin grunted, back to digging.
Joan had only wanted the work to be made more pleasant. “How long have you lived at Greenway?”
“Forever. Born across the way in Dits’m.”
“I hadn’t realized. You’ve been here far longer than your mistress.”
“Father was here the longest. Before he went.”
She’d rather lost track of the woman’s loss. All this desire to care and comfort in the nursery but she hadn’t spared any for the people who lived on the estate or at the farms. These were the ancestors in whose dust she dug.
She had at one time supposed Elsie Bastin the pantry thief, a little too pleased with herself. But why shouldn’t she be? She had a home, a real home with roots that dug all the way to the heart of the place, and that was no small thing.
Joan went back to her patch, her hands cold and her attitude turned inward and sharp.
All day long, Joan thought of Mrs. Bastin, her ancestral grounds and family all around her, and swallowed her envy until she thought she might choke. Joan had her two youngest foster daughters with her now, but her natural daughter, her foster sons—it was all she wished for, to have them all together again.
And then to find the mistress had arrived, unannounced.
Unannounced to her. Scaldwell always seemed to know when she might arrive.
That night Mrs. Christie had her meal in the dining room, alone, not to be disturbed. They had theirs in the kitchen as usual after the children were in bed, her family and the Scaldwells. Bridey had taken to solitude and it was just as well.
“Is there any more of that rhubarb?” Malcolm asked pleasantly. They’d had a supper of something Mrs. Scaldwell had made from a recipe on the wireless, all the ingredients standing in for something they weren’t. Nothing one should want more of, and she’d already given him her portion.
“No,” Mrs. Scaldwell said.
There was more, as a matter of fact. “It was a lovely meal, Mrs. Scaldwell,” Joan said. “The rhubarb was tart.” Did it ring of criticism? “Refreshing.”
Her ill humor sizzled under her skin. Greenway was a lovely home but not large enough, and it was her doing, bringing the children here and tying all their fates together with one string, too tight and the knots fraying. But what right did she have to regret or worry?
Joan didn’t have to wonder the Scaldwells felt the same way about them.
Malcolm pulled out a cigar and the girls went up for bed. Joan had stood to help clear when Mrs. Scaldwell approached the table from the scullery and bumped her husband’s shoulder with her hip.
Mr. Scaldwell cleared his throat. “I’ve had a talk with the mistress this afternoon.”
Malcolm stiffened next to her.
“Yes?” Joan said.
“The Admiralty,” Scaldwell said, “is requisitioning Greenway and all its buildings and lands.”
Joan sat shakily. “When?”
“Soon, if they have their way. The Mallowans are taking this up the chain of command,” Scaldwell said. “For themselves, they prefer the damage small children might cause next to that done by sailors.”
Joan allowed her chin to dip to her chest. How much of her life had she promised to this arrangement? She only meant to do some little good. Maybe the requisition would force the children back to their parents’ care, freeing her and Malcolm to find their own foxhole for the duration.
But she couldn’t abandon them. Their mothers had held her hand and thanked her, and given her their trust. She couldn’t help but think of little Sam Poole.
“We appreciate Mrs. Mallowan’s efforts to fight the order.” The stench of Malcolm’s cigar made Joan sick at her stomach. “I’ve had few responses to my inquiries last year, when we thought the house might be sold. I suppose I should—I should follow them up? How long do you think we have?”
“I wouldn’t wager on any time at all. I’m sorry.” Scaldwell did seem regretful.
“You’re out, too, aren’t you?” Malcolm said.
“Likely,” Scaldwell said. “And one wonders if the house itself will survive.”
“I’m sure the house will somehow keep standing without you opening and closing the shutters.”
“I don’t mean without me,” Scaldwell said. “Only, it seems to me many of the houses in the area are filling up with soldiers and sailors, aren’t they?” His thoughts seemed to take him far away. “Something’s happening. We can only hope it’s the end that’s coming.”
“A victorious end,” Joan amended.
“Yes.”
But she would take any kind, and perhaps Mr. Scaldwell would as well.
“There is a bit of the rhubarb, if you’d like it,” Mrs. Scaldwell said. Smoothing things over.
“I’ve lost my appetite.” Malcolm stood and pushed in his chair.
In their room, he stormed back and forth. “The cheek of that man. Who will you bother?”
“It’s out of his control. It’s always been out of his control,” Joan said. Tired. “I’ll write to everyone, I suppose. All the big houses will be filled.”
“What good does money do, I ask you,” he muttered. “We might have stayed at home—”
“And be trapped there? Have you heard from anyone on Jersey? Have you heard from anyone since it fell?”
Malcolm was as surprised as a kitten at her tone. “They’re in the wind, like us.”
“They might be, darling.” But she wondered.
Malcolm slipped out of bed in the dark hours. Joan reached for him and when she woke, it was a minute later or hours and he was still gone. She turned onto her back and studied the empty ceiling rose above. That was the way the lady of the house liked it, Mrs. Scaldwell had said once. All the central lights had been taken out when the house was redone, the ceiling roses left decorative and purposeless. “She likes lamps and candles,” Mrs. Scaldwell said. “Flattering light. It’s no use against the dark, though, is it?”
Joan agreed with her. For someone who liked to read as much as Mrs. Christie, for someone who wrote stories and might reckon with what one might call metaphor, the empty, ornamental detail was an odd choice.
She got up to look for her dressing gown. Perhaps Malcolm was ill and needed her. All that rhubarb, one didn’t have to wonder. She couldn’t find the dressing gown in her own cupboard, hadn’t seen it in a while.
She went to the cupboard Malcolm used and opened it. A sheet had been rolled up and stuffed into the shelf. Had he torn up more household linens for paint rags? Scaldwell would have him for it. She pulled out the wad and stared, understanding only after a moment what it was she saw.
A few hours later, Joan sat fidgeting at the little table in their room with a stack of Greenway stationery she’d pinched from the library. The first letter was to the Ministry of Health, alerting them to the situation and asking for guidance. Then the Women’s Voluntary Service. Perhaps the children could be absorbed into another nursery.
The third?
Who will you bother? Joan took a breath. She needed a different tone for this letter. Who was to say Mrs. Christie was the only skilled writer in residence at Greenway House?
Dearest friend.
She started with the nearest circle, those most likely to feel obligation. Close friends, old friends. She had never been a woman of society, had not been invited or allowed. No tearooms or parlors, no season in London, no societies. Not when it might have mattered and set her on a different path.
She sat back in Mrs. Agatha Christie’s own chair and wondered which path she might have preferred.
But she knew people, and some of them might be called upon for a name or suggestion, a whisper in the right ear.
When she ran out of chummy friends, she turned to distant ones. Acquaintances, friends in common. Dear sir, dear madam. If you might do me this kindness. Her hand began to cramp.
Joan put down her pen and kneaded at the pain. The lady who lived here directed servants through the many houses and apartments she owned, let, rented, refurbished, and kept her own correspondence with agents, publishers, foreign and domestic. She picked up the pen again.
To whom it may concern. If you might be able to assist.
The words began to grate at her, the wheedling tone. Her neck felt tight.
She was going begging, that’s what it was. She did not feel the power of using the great woman’s paper and pen, only the scrape against her dignity, again. Always. She should have been expected to be sorted by now. Instead, she was forced to reach out in every direction, toward any meager connection like a Jane Austen heroine left a pittance in her father’s will.
Joan’s hand stilled over the page. Ink gathered in a pool on her last word. She crumpled the note and dropped it into the bin.
It was easy to forget, huddling from the bombs in someone else’s home, that she had some funds at her command.
Not enough funds to keep Malcolm from hoarding jars of preserves in the cupboard of their room like a little match girl, apparently. If the Scaldwells found out . . .
A not-insubstantial amount of money was exactly what she had. Enough money to fight over, to cause rift.
Some still thought she shouldn’t have had her share of George’s estate, that she and their children had somehow not deserved to have security. She hadn’t spent it down. She’d nested on it, a golden egg. Making their lives pleasant now and then—
The jars of preserves in Malcolm’s cupboard rankled. Stealing from their generous host and hoarding them against—what? Was anything ever enough?
Joan took up a new sheet of the letterhead and smoothed it with her hand. Greenway House, Churston Ferrers, South Devon. Churston connection, 81243.
How to state it? To whom.
This is the last will, testament of one Florence Annie Arbuthnot, she wrote, and just this once, she did not think of Malcolm at all.