Evie (17 page)

‘Boss about?’ she asked.

‘What d’you want with ’im, my lover?’ Eileen asked, slicing carrots.

‘Just need to ask ’im some’at,’ Hester told her.

‘He’s a busy man these days, Hester. What with ’im being a magistrate and that, on top of all this fuss with Evie Clark. You’ll not be wastin’ ’is time, will you? What’s it you want to see ’im about?’ There was a pause. Eileen peeled an onion, wiped her eyes and turned them, watering, on Hester. ‘Mmm?’ It was a question to which Eileen definitely needed an answer. And which, when it came down to it, Hester needed to ask. Unable to seek advice from her own mother and disinclined to involve Dave’s, because Rose would, inevitably, take her son’s side in any discussion, she was instinctively turning to the next best thing which, in this instance, was Eileen, whose reputation for good, solid, common sense was widely respected in the Post Stone valley.

‘’Tis they cottages,’ Hester began. Leaving Thurza asleep in her buggy, she sidled onto one of the chairs set around the kitchen table on which Eileen was preparing tonight’s dinner
and began by describing the plans for the new cottages at the lower farm in precise and glowing detail, emphasising the perfection of the modern bathrooms and how the kitchens were to be personally designed by Mrs Bayliss herself, who was, as Eileen already knew, an expert on such things. Eileen put down her sharp knife, transferred some cubed parsnips into the casserole dish and met Hester’s eyes.

‘And you and Dave wants one of ’em, is that it?’

‘Yes.’ Hester said, and then hesitated. You had to be honest with Eileen, otherwise, what was the point. ‘Well,
I
does,’ she admitted.

‘And Dave don’t. Right?’ Eileen asked. Hester nodded.

‘’E don’t even want me to ask,’ she whined. ‘Says that our cottage has alus been good enough for ’im and all the Crockers before ’im and what am I on about!’

‘Well, what
are
you on about Hester, my dear?’ was Eileen’s disappointing response. ‘You was happy enough to move into that cottage a few months back, weren’t you! You and a child that isn’t even Dave’s?’ Hester winced. ‘Seems to me you want to learn to count your blessings, Missie!’

‘I do count ’em, Eileen! Every day! Honest. It’s just—’

‘It’s just “much wants more”! Yes, lovey, I knows what it is, alright!’ Eileen chopped vigorously and the moments passed. ‘The Crocker cottage is as old as this valley, Hester. They do say ’twas there even before either of the farmhouses was built. To be honest with you, ’tis a bit of a wreck, no one could deny that. But ’tis Dave’s wreck, Hester. ’Tis where ’e were born and raised. ’Twas what ’e come home to, when ’e got ’imself half killed in the war. You remember that? A great
lump of shrapnel in ’is leg, he ’ad. You was one of they land girls then. You needs to think about all that afore you goes to the boss and starts stirrin’ things up! You gotta sort things out with your Dave afore you does that, my dear. Know what I’d do?’ Hester shook her head. ‘I’d get off home and I’d cook him ’is favourite grub for ’is dinner. That’s what I’d do.’ And she did.

Zeke stood and stared at the pile of loose limestone. It had been there for as long as he could remember, although, now, it was more or less completely hidden by brambles, ivies and straggles of old man’s beard. A small quarry, long since abandoned, formed a craggy background, a place to which, on the rare occasions when he could elude his father, the young Zeke had escaped to play alone with his limited imagination. One summer he had built a fort of stone blocks and made it weatherproof by roofing part of it with slates supported on a frame of saplings. In one corner he constructed a basic fireplace where he roasted the odd rabbit, filched from his father’s traps. It was his refuge. His sanctuary. No one knew of it. Not even his little sister who would attempt to follow him until the stinging nettles and the brambles proved too much for her bare legs.

‘No, you can’t come, Hes! ’Tis a boys’ place I goes to. It bain’t for girls. Go ’ome.’ Hester had whined and sulked
but knew better than to follow him. One day he had found his sanctuary destroyed, its roof pulled down, its firestones scattered. That night, as the family sat, as usual, in silence, consuming a thin, mutton stew, Jonas told his wife and children that there was a vagrant in the neighbourhood.

‘Bin campin’ up near the old quarry, the thievin’ varmint. You’re to tell me the instant you sees or hears any one prowlin’ about and I’ll take me shotgun to ’un! D’you ’ear me?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Yes, Jonas.’

Today, after assessing the quality and quantity of the quarried stone, Zeke moved on, up onto the bald headland where Jonas Tucker had dreamt of building his chapel. Zeke found an area where several wooden pegs, driven into the hard earth, indicated that this was the chosen place. If there were ghosts, Zeke thought, standing near the cliff edge, looking out along the wild, empty North Devon coastline, this was surely the place where Jonas Tucker’s soul would linger.

With his mother safely in a convalescent home, following radical treatment for what the specialist had described to Zeke as ‘a mental condition causing extreme depression’, he found himself alone in the Tucker cottage for the first time in his life. Without his mother’s baleful, watchful eyes on him, he wandered freely through the cottage and its ancient outbuildings, making his own objective assessment of their condition, deciding firstly what might be done and secondly, what would have to be done in order to turn the place into a decent home for himself and Polly.

The face of the cottage was a shabbily built, Victorian facade, a clumsy attempt to modernise what had once been an ancient stone structure. Jonas had acquired it, together with five acres of land, when the owner became insolvent in the late twenties. Behind the cottage were several solid outbuildings which Zeke now saw as potential extensions to the existing accommodation. Each day, having completed his work on the holding, he circled these outbuildings with a measuring rod in his hands and aspirations in his head.

There had been a little over two thousand pounds in Jonas Tucker’s trunk and a few hundred more in the bank account he had used to buy seed and stock for the holding. This, taking into account the strange circumstances of the Tucker family, Hester and Zeke, after considerable thought, proposed to divide as they saw fit. The Pentecostal Brethren would receive five hundred pounds in memory of their father. Hester’s share, as a married woman with a husband to provide for her, would also be five hundred, while Zeke, whose work on the holding had achieved its present, modest solvency and who would be responsible for their mother over her declining years, needed funds with which to repair the cottage and make it acceptable for this purpose and to the girl he hoped to marry. For this his share was to be the remaining thousand pounds plus the business account in the bank.

‘No one knows about this money,’ Zeke reminded his sister, ‘and no one needs to know, right?’

‘’Cept Dave,’ Hester said. ‘I ’aven’t said nothin’ to ’im yet, but I got to, Zeke. I don’t like keepin’ things from ’im.’

‘But ’e’ll tell ’is ma and you know what Rose Crocker be like! ’Twill be all over the valley in no time flat!’ Hester knew this was true. She hesitated and then shook her head.

‘No, Zeke. If I takes it, I gotta tell my Dave.’ They sat, eyes locked.

‘Yeah,’ Zeke sighed, eventually. ‘Course you ’ave to, Hes. Course you does … After some further thought his face lit. ‘Tell you what, though! Tell you what we could do! We could make your share over to Thurza!’

‘Thurza?’

‘Yeah! A legacy from ’er grandad! Us’ll start up a post office account for her! You needn’t come into it! I’ll open it and I’ll tell Dave it were our father’s wish! Which it should of bin in the rightness of things. Anyroad, ’twill be on my conscience, not yourn! ’Ow about that, then? Eh?’

And so it happened that Thurza Alice (daughter of Hester née Tucker, widow of the late Private Reuben Westerfeldt, 29th Division, US Army and subsequently adopted by her new husband David William Crocker, cowman, of Lower Post Stone Farm, Ledburton), became, at the age of almost twelve months, a person of means.

The clouds were low on the morning of Evie’s departure. A strong south-westerly wind was driving squalls of rain up the valley. By eight o’clock, breakfasted and with their overnight bags beside the front door, the petrol tank of their car filled to capacity by courtesy of an emigration officer at New Zealand House, Roger and Alice Bayliss were on schedule. Alice was about to drive down to the village to collect Evie, while Roger
spent the twenty minutes this would take in the farm office, briefing his labourers on their duties for the rest of that day and the morning of the following one. Dave and Ferdie were to spend the time removing hay and mangels from the loft of the barn at the lower farm so that the builders could get better access to it when they arrived to start work on the two cottages. Taking Dave aside, Roger told him what he had already guessed. It had been decided that precise knowledge of the details of Evie’s departure should be restricted to as few people as possible, her ultimate destination being already classified as secret.

‘This time tomorrow she’ll be halfway down the Bay of Biscay,’ Roger told him, quietly, adding, ‘We should be back by early afternoon. No one must know that she’s gone and certainly not where she’s going, understood?’

‘Understood, sir!’ Dave’s ruddy face flushed with excitement. ‘And good luck to the pair of ’em, I say!’

Even Rose Crocker had not known for sure that the day of departure had arrived until the evening before it, when after taking a bath and washing her hair, Evie checked her documents for one last time before carefully stowing them in the leather handbag that Alice had given her as a parting present.

‘You best ’ave an early night, my lover,’ Rose advised, solemnly, on learning that Alice would be collecting Evie at precisely ten minutes past eight next morning. Evie had nodded, compliantly.

‘The London docks is a long way off, Mr Bayliss says, and he wants to get an early start ’cos you never knows with
the weather this time of year.’ Evie and Rose sat over the fire, for the last time sipping their customary bedtime cocoa, although it was barely half past eight.

Alice drove carefully down the lane towards the narrow bridge that crossed the stream. A squall of wind-driven rain lashed the car, almost blotting out the landscape below her. She peered ahead while her windscreen wipers noisily did their best to prevent her vision being seriously blurred, adjusted her speed and moved slowly on. As the rain lessened, she smiled ruefully. Was there to be no end to her responsibilities for her land girls? Even now, with all but three of them gone from the valley – all but two by tonight, when Evie’s ship would have sailed – she had risen at six-thirty in order to prepare for the long drive to London and through it to Tilbury Docks. Later she and Roger would spend a difficult evening with her friend Ruth, who made no secret of her dislike of Roger. On the following morning they would make the journey home again. Then and only then, would Alice feel that she had properly discharged her responsibility for Evie. But now there was Georgina, whom Alice had felt able to tick off her list of worries when she had made her decision to marry Christopher. However, some of Georgina’s recent letters had seemed to Alice to be a little odd. Was she as happy as she repeatedly insisted? Had the recent miscarriage upset her more than she was admitting? And why had she chosen, initially at any rate, to keep the news from her parents? Alice sighed. It was, she decided, rather like having ten daughters. Always one or another of them giving her cause for concern. Like poor Mrs Bennett.

The rain increased again as she negotiated the narrow, ivy-covered bridge, just beyond which the lane divided, the right fork running parallel to the stream before reaching the lower farm, the right continuing up, over the hill before dropping down into the village.

As Alice engaged second gear, ready to begin the steep climb up, from the valley floor, she saw the figure of a man in the centre of the lane. He was moving away from her, plodding heavily towards the fork in the lane. Hearing the car he slowed, stopped and turned to face it. The narrowness of the lane, its steep banks overgrown with tangled autumn vegetation, made it impossible for Alice to drive safely past him unless he stood aside. She hesitated and then, in order to draw his attention to the situation, politely sounded her horn. Instead of letting her pass he came towards her until he was standing directly in front of the car, peering at her windscreen which was obscured not only by the heavy rain but by the brisk movement of the wipers. Alice lowered her window, winding it down until she could lean out enough to call out to him.

‘Would you stand aside, please!’ It was as he came towards her, rounding the car’s offside wing, that she recognised him. Even with his face half obscured by an upturned collar and a rain-sodden cloth cap, Norman Clark’s features were unmistakable. For a second she froze, her mind grappling with a sequence of half-developed scenarios. She knew she should react while she had the momentary advantage of surprise, because there was a possibility that, being unfamiliar with the Bayliss car, Norman Clark had not yet identified her. They had, after all, met only once and briefly, when he
had arrived unexpectedly and removed Evie from the hostel. Alice with her left hand on the gear lever and her foot on the clutch, revved the engine. In that split second Norman Clark reached the partially open window and thrust his face so close to Alice’s that she could smell his sour breath.

If he had not recognised her before, he did now. With her way no longer impeded, Alice was about to release the clutch when Clark reached in through the lowered window and seized her right wrist. She struggled, unable to shake him off or to fully close the window.

‘Tell me where she is!’ he bawled. ‘Tell me! I’ll stop at nothing ’til I gets it out of yer! Don’t think I don’t mean it!’ His spittle and his anger exploded into her face.

‘Where who is?’ she demanded, struggling to inch the window up, trapping his forearm but unable to release his grip and feeling her bones creak under the pressure of his huge fist.

‘My wife!’ he bawled. ‘Evie! That’s who! As if you didn’t know!’

‘Your wife? How should I know where she is?’ Alice shouted desperately. ‘You took her home to Coventry!’ He twisted her wrist until it felt as though the skin was being stripped from it. The pain was so acute that Alice howled through gritted teeth. It was not so much a cry of pain as of fury. The open section of the window was small but it was enough, blocked now by his intruding arm and the grip from which she could not free herself. She began to yell at him. Using words and phrases she had learnt during the most extreme and fortunately rare disputes between one or other of the most volatile of her land girls, she delivered herself of every foul expletive she
could lay her tongue to – some of which she barely knew the meaning of – before reverting to the more elegant but equally vehement vocabulary which was her own. ‘Let go of me NOW, you filthy, bullying oaf! You half-witted lout! You moron!’

Clark shook his head as though to rid his ears of the surprising tirade of abuse. His grip on her wrist slackened slightly as he pressed his face against the opening in the window.

‘Reckon you got her hid in that hostel of yours!’ he hissed, horribly close to her ear. ‘She’s there, isn’t she? Eh? … Eh?’

‘Why would she be there?’ Alice countered, pulling desperately away from him. ‘The place has been boarded up for months!’ She gritted her teeth and then with a sudden, brutal wrench, twisted her wrist from his grasp and rolled up the window, briefly trapping his grimy fingers. ‘Get away from my car!’ She yelled, slamming the engine into gear and noisily releasing the clutch. His fingers were dragged free as the tyres skidded and then gripped in the mud. As the car lurched forward Norman’s face briefly struck the glass beside Alice and she flinched away from the open pores in the greasy skin that was so close to hers. At that moment Alice became convinced that he was going out of his mind.

‘So you can go to the police station, I s’pose!’ he roared at her as the car heaved forward.

‘If you’ve any sense you won’t be here when they come for you!’ she yelled back.

Accelerating up the incline she found him in her rear-view mirror, an abject, solitary figure, half hidden by wind-driven rain, standing, flat-footed in the middle of the narrow lane. He looked trapped, Alice thought. And perhaps he was. By the
miserable mess his life had become. There had been a time, when Alice was told of Norman Clark’s deprived childhood, how he had been reared by irresponsible relatives, foster homes and then an orphanage, that she had felt a concern for the unwanted, unloved boy. But the fact was that he had grown into a violent and abusive man whose treatment of Evie, and the sight of the injury to her own wrist, which was reddening, purpling and throbbing as she gripped the wheel, focused her on the absolute necessity of removing Evie from the threat of his violence.