Evie (15 page)

‘But they talk English in New Zealand, don’t they?’ Rose wanted to know.

‘Yes they do. But Giorgio and me might go to live in Italy one day.’

Ten days later Evie received a blue airmail envelope from Naples where Giorgio had safely arrived to a warm welcome from his extensive family. By the same post she was informed by the Chief Migration Officer at New Zealand House that her application for an assisted passage to Wellington had been accepted. She was to sail from Tilbury in three weeks time. All she needed now was a smallpox vaccination certificate.

It had been two weeks since Theo Parker, the Bayliss’s family doctor, had broken the skin on Evie’s upper arm and applied the invisible vaccine. The wound had swollen and throbbed, bubbled and boiled. ‘Exactly as it should,’ he told her, smiling into her concerned eyes as he filled out the certificate, signed it and slid it across his desk to her.

‘What on earth does she want to go out there for?’ he asked Alice and Roger over drinks a few days later.

‘It’s a long story,’ Alice told him.

‘And it’s not quite over yet,’ Roger said, adding, ‘and her destination is classified information, don’t forget.’

‘Absolutely, old man,’ Theo smiled. ‘Patient confidentiality and all that.’

Although the word ‘marriage’ was never mentioned, something of a trousseau was being put together for Evie Clark. Alice donated an exotic silk peignoir, a relic of her first marriage which she no longer cared to wear.

‘It’s only a hand-me-down,’ she confessed to Evie, who had immediately become enchanted by the lush ivory folds and wide sleeves.

‘But it’s beautiful,’ she smiled, her grey eyes wide. There
was a pair of satin shoes which Winnie had worn with her bridesmaid outfit on Marion’s wedding day and which pinched her feet but fitted Evie’s well enough. During his first summer on the farm, Edward John had found, in a furrow in a freshly ploughed field, a small amethyst, set in seed pearls, a pendant without its chain, which had been turned up by the ploughshare. When no one claimed it, Edward John had been allowed to keep it. He liked the way the colour matched the purple of the heather on the moor and had thought, at one point, of giving it to Pamela. Now he decided to offer it to Evie as a parting present. Alice found a light silver chain she rarely wore and Edward John threaded the pendant onto it.

‘To remind you of Post Stone valley,’ he told Evie, solemnly and blushed when she kissed him, laughing, full on the lips.

‘You’re going to be a proper heartbreaker one day, Edward John!’ she told him blithely, laughing at his embarrassment.

‘Gee whizz!’ Winnie exclaimed, a reaction perhaps to the strident American stamps on the letter that had been waiting at her digs that evening. She and Marion, born and reared within two minutes’ walk of one another, had been parted when Marion met and subsequently married Sergeant Marvin Kinski, a professional US serviceman. Recently shipped over to the United States with a thousand or so other war brides, Marion had adjusted well to the life of an army wife. Now, to her delight, Marvin was soon to take up a posting in Western Germany and she was already happily planning a visit to her homeland and to her lifelong friend. Winnie turned to Gwennan who was at that moment fully occupied by a second helping of their landlady’s apple crumble. ‘Marvin’s getting posted to Germany!’ she announced. ‘And Marion’s gonna come over and visit us!’ Gwennan nodded and swallowed approvingly.

‘Is he now!’ she managed at last, adding more custard to her half-empty plate and reloading her spoon. Winnie continued to read out her letter, her hand shaking with excitement.

‘She says I better get me finger out and settle meself in me pub or she won’t ’ave nowhere to stay when she comes to England ’cos she’s not going to her folks! Not after them not bothering to turn up for her wedding. “Miserable sods” she calls ’em! Anyroad, looks like there’s plenty of time ’cos she says Marvin won’t get no leave ’til next June.’

‘Well, I never …’ Gwennan said in her clipped Welsh accent, laying her spoon on her empty plate. When she had first arrived at the hostel she had often used the phrase ‘indeed to goodness’ but the girls soon teased her out of that. While it was true that she had no Marvin Kinski and no best friend writing to her from America, very soon now she would cease to be Gwennan Pringle, Womens’ Land Army and become Miss G. Pringle. Manageress of A. D. Pringle’s Funeral Parlour at Llandollery. In a few years’ time, if all went well, the sign was to be altered to read ‘A.D. Pringle and Niece’. So what did she want with best friends or a Sergeant Kinski?

Winnie and her Uncle Ted were due to take over the lease of the Red Cow early in the new year of 1946. Following the signing of contracts with the brewery and the landlord who was a local, self-made millionaire in the cotton trade, a minor refurbishment of the shabby building was being planned.

‘We’re keeping it traditional,’ Winnie had written to Marion. ‘I’ve chose a lovely ruby-red flock wallpaper for the
snug and we’re having a new bathroom with all tiles and that, for the commercial trade.’ The Red Cow, well known for its generous breakfasts and friendly bar staff, was already a favourite with travelling salesmen on the northern circuit.

Roger Bayliss would be pleased to see the back of the last two of his land girls when, by Christmas, their days in the Post Stone valley would be over. Never his favourites, it had not escaped his notice that both Winnie and Gwennan were exploiting the fact that, with two more of his labourers recently released from military service, these girls were foisting the heavier, dirtier work onto the men. Since the closing of the hostel, the cost of billeting the girls at the pub was more than Roger had bargained for.

‘They do more eating than working!’ he complained to Alice.

‘Not as much as Mabel did!’ Alice reminded him, recalling Mabel’s insatiable appetite when she first arrived at the hostel. The pint-sized cockney had seemed to be making up for a lifetime of deprivation. ‘I’d never seen anyone eat like Mabel did!’

‘So much so that no one noticed when she was with child!’ Roger laughed.

‘With children, you mean,’ Alice corrected him and they smiled as they recalled the unexpected birth of Scarlet O’Hara and Winston Ferdinand, the twins which had been proudly fathered by Ferdie Vallance, and how Roger had marched Mabel off to church, a plump infant under each arm, where Ferdie was happily waiting to make an honest woman of her.

Although Edward John was maturing fast – his increasing
height balanced by strong, muscular development – a result of his fondness for rugby, Pamela still outstripped him. Her figure had matured in the six months since he had first been smitten by her and now suggested womanliness rather than the delicious girlishness that had so strongly attracted him. Even when she told him that she was no longer ‘seeing’ Mr Seale Hayne, Edward John did not experience the feeling of elation he might have expected and even found himself making unfavourable comparisons between Pamela and a girl called Daphne, whom he had recently met at the birthday party of one of his school friends.

Alice was relieved to find that Edward John had come through the recent period of tension and even depression which had, over the past few months concerned her. Uncertain of its cause she had considered that it might have been a belated reaction to her divorce or a symptom of a difficulty in his adjustment to her recent marriage to Roger Bayliss, although her instincts on the latter possibility persuaded her otherwise. Except for an initial shyness, Edward John had always approved of Roger, who had strongly encouraged his immediate and continuing interest in the land and the livestock on the two Bayliss farms. Edward John’s involvement in the Giorgio and Evie situation, which had committed him to complex and sustained secrecy, had been difficult for a boy who had always found it easy to confide in his mother. Alice remembered the numerous occasions when, sensing his tension, she had asked him if he was all right, or if something was worrying him. Always she had seen the evasive eyes and the quick shake of the head and been unconvinced by his
reassurance. But she trusted him and was well aware that he was approaching the time when the decisions he made would be increasingly his own. Nevertheless, when the facts became known and he was relieved of the responsibility he had taken on regarding the runaways, his mother shared that relief, and the fact that he had withstood it so well pleased her.

Letters and even the odd telegram confirmed that Georgina and Christopher had covered all the arrangements concerning Evie and Giorgio’s eventual arrival in New Zealand. Roger, who had cultivated a useful relationship with various members of the immigration staff at New Zealand House, had succeeded in making it almost certain that the couple would be berthed on the same ship, though not in the same cabin, for their voyage out. Roger had even been issued with a petrol voucher which would enable him and Alice to drive Evie to Tilbury and see her safely aboard the P&O liner
Orontes
in early December. Until then, Evie would continue to live with Rose Crocker, to write almost daily – sometimes in Italian – to Giorgio who, in Naples, was putting together evidence of his education, his apprenticeships as woodturner and cabinetmaker and references from the administrators of the various Catholic churches which had employed him before the war. These, together with his war record, would not only qualify him for financial compensation for all the years of his internment but impress potential employers in his new country.

Since there was no further sign nor any news of Norman Clark, the tension inevitably eased and the valley people grew
less watchful and less inquisitive. As a result there was little interest in the details of either Giorgio’s departure or of Evie’s plans to follow him. Some assumed that Giorgio still worked for Edwin Lucas and that Evie’s residence with Rose Crocker had become permanent. Others simply did not care. Certainly the couple had ceased to be the focus of speculative interest which they had previously been. Newer, more salacious gossip, involving returning servicemen, had overtaken them. A young Fräulein from Cologne had arrived in Ledburton, with her blustering father beside her and a one-year-old and heavily freckled infant in her arms. Together they had confronted a ginger-haired cowman, recently returned to a neighbouring farm after military service in Germany, with this unwelcome evidence of his parenthood. Another unhappy family were grappling with the harsh fact that a wife had given birth during the five years her husband had spent in a Japanese internment camp and while large numbers of US servicemen had been stationed in England, training for the D-Day landings. The fact that the beautiful, black toddler had been christened Hank compounded the problem, suggesting an unrepentant attitude on the part of the erring wife. This and various other infidelities were keeping the valley gossips well occupied, and as only so much scandalised excitement could be sustained at any one time, Evie and Giorgio, conveniently became yesterday’s news.

Evie’s culinary skills which had hitherto been undeveloped, proved, under Rose’s more experienced tuition, to be exceptional. Soon her pasties were as good, if not better than Rose’s.

‘Don’t suppose they eat pasties in New Zealand,’ Rose murmured as she kneaded a lump of dough. ‘Or scones. Pity. You could of started up a nice little business of your own, Evie, dear.’

‘Georgina likes pasties,’ Evie told her. ‘So does Christopher. And there’s lots of English people out there now. It says so in the book the emigration people sent.’

‘Is there?’ Rose wanted to know. ‘First I heard of it. I thought they was mostly black people with bones through their noses. Anyway, they killed Captain Cook!’

‘No they didn’t, Rose!’

‘Well some lot down there did for him!’ Rose insisted. ‘Speared by the blacks, he were. Our teacher told us! She showed us a picture. In grass skirts they was and carrying great long spears.’ Evie was not sure enough of her facts to argue with Rose, specially as she was, at that moment, a trusted and valued support. Silence fell as the two women concentrated on chopping and dicing the carrots, swedes, onions and potatoes and adding the chunks of lean beef flank for that day’s batch of pasties, then forking in the sage and parsley seasoning and sprinkling on the salt and pepper. Soon the heat was rising from the ovens of Rose’s little bakehouse as the ingredients melted together, the rich gravy thickened and the pastry grew crisp and golden. The air became filled with a distinctive and seductive aroma which escaped from the bakehouse to waft along the village street, making every passer-by wonder how it was that he or she felt suddenly so hungry and not only hungry but possessed by an overpowering desire for something
advertised on a sign over the shop door. ‘Try One of Rose Crocker’s Famous Devon Pasties,’ it read. And they did.

One morning in mid November Zeke’s van lumbered into the yard at the lower farm and slithered to a muddy stop. Zeke lurched out of the driver’s seat and stumbled into his sister’s cottage.

‘Whatever’s up?’ Hester asked, alarmed by the state of him. ‘Is it Mother? Be she sick?’ He was white and trembling, shaking his shaggy head and almost beyond speech.

‘Sit you down!’ his sister told him sharply. ‘And pull yourself together!’ But he was beyond composure.

‘No! You gotta come, Hes! Now! You gotta come cos I dunno what to do with it! Ma knew it was there! Her never said nothun but her knew! I could tell!’

‘Knew what was where? What are you on about, Zeke?’

‘The money!’

‘What money? Whose?’

‘I dunno whose! I dunno where it come from! But it’s there, Hes! Loads and loads and loads of it. You gotta come! Now!’

Zeke’s driving as he recrossed the moor made Hester fearful for her life and, more importantly, for Thurza’s. But the little girl enjoyed the rough ride and the more they swerved along the narrow lanes and swooped up, over the steep, humpbacked bridges and across the heights of the misty wilderness, the more Thurza shrieked with delight and the tighter her mother clutched her.

‘Go easy, Zeke!’ she pleaded. ‘You’ll kill us all, else! Just
calm down a bit and tell us what’s goin’ on!’

The fact that he now had the support of his sister seemed to have a steadying effect on Zeke. He slowed the car slightly and began to speak.

‘Since Father was funeralled Mother won’t go near their bedroom and you can see why, Hes. She knows what she done! Us all knows what she done!’

‘No,’ Hester told him, firmly. ‘No one but you, me and Mother knows! And even you and me can’t be certain.’

‘But the pilla, Hes! It were over Father’s face! She’d smothered ’im!’

‘No, Zeke! What we saw was Father lying dead and Mother holdin’ the pilla! You don’t know, and I don’t know, how he’d come to be dead! She might of been plannin’ on finishin’ ’im but we don’t know if she did! The doctor said it was natural causes killed ’im and that’s good enough for me! And what’s more, Ezekial Tucker, I don’t want to hear another word from you about what Mother did or didn’t do! ’Tis over now, whatever ’twas. And it would have bin what she thought was best for Father! She loved him, Zeke. All her life she loved him, and if at the very end, she eased his passing whatever way she saw fit, that’s alright with me!’

For a while they drove in silence, leaving the moor and emerging onto farmland near the north Devon coast.

‘Anyrate,’ Zeke said at last. ‘She’m behaving that odd I ’ad to get the doctor out to her. It were a different doctor as saw to Father. A younger one. Mother sits in the yard a lot these days, see, and won’t come indoors. This doctor went outside and talked to her where she were. Sittin’ by the henhouse she
were, even though ’twas rainin’ a bit. Then he come indoors and told me she be in a traumatised state. D’you know what traumatised is, Hes?’ His sister shook her head. ‘’Tis when some’at bad’s bin goin’ on and it gets in your head,’ Zeke told her. ‘The doc said she’s gonna have to go to Plymouth for special treatment. After that she might be better.’

‘Only might be?’ Hester queried and then asked, ‘What sort of special treatment?’ Zeke shrugged.

‘This morning, while she were out in the yard, I thought I’d have a go at sorting out the bedroom. It’s in a bit of a state as you can imagine, ’cos I haven’t got round to goin’ in there and seein’ to it. Been puttin’ it off, I daresay.’

Hester looked at her brother. The familiar profile, his eyes on the road, his young face reflecting the unrelentingly bleak life his parents had inflicted on him.

‘I’m sorry, Zeke!’ she said. ‘I should of come over and stayed and helped more ’an I did! You shouldn’t of ’ad all this to cope with on your own! Reckon I got off light compared to you.’