Summer's End (34 page)

Stumbling and panting she fled along the footpath, not stopping to glance behind her until at last she could plunge off it and lose herself among the rows of bines, heavily laden with ripening hops, providing a sheltered arbour of acrid dry scent. She drew deep breaths as she stopped, shuddering, terrified she was being followed. She was surrounded only by the deep silence of the fields. Or so she had thought.

‘Are you all right? Miss Lilley, isn't it?'

Her heart sank. Pushing through the bines, alerted by her heavy sobs, was that terrible hop man Eliot, cap on his head, red kerchief at his neck, and with that threatening moustache. Instinctively she backed away, and he stopped still in his tracks.

‘Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt you. Tell me if there's anything I can do.' He looked so concerned that she burst out crying in earnest.

Frank Eliot wavered, undecided, cursing his luck for strolling up at this moment. Cautiously he came closer, for he had no alternative. ‘Shall I escort you back home to your father?' he asked quietly, alarmed to see her dishevelled state.

‘No!' How could she face Father or Mother like this?

‘Have – did –' Frank broke off, perplexed. He had never been in such a situation. A man, for sure, and in one leap he guessed who it was, but what to say next that would not embarrass her coming from another man? Had the fellow raped her?

‘I've some beer here, Miss Lilley.' He swung his luncheon bag down from his shoulder. ‘Sit down and have some.'

‘No, thank you.'

She spoke so sharply, he realised what she was fearing. ‘You stand then. But have some. It will steady you, and then I'll take you home.'

She grabbed at the old lemonade bottle, in which some horrible looking liquid had replaced the lemonade she longed for. Fleetingly it crossed her mind he could be a white slaver, but she didn't care. The beer tasted bitter and rough, but it did steady her, enough to say eventually: ‘I'm all right now. Thank you. I don't need to go home.' She was rigid with shame.

‘Look, Miss Lilley, I'm a man. It's not right I should be asking you outright, but I must. If there's some tramp or
anyone
been doing things he shouldn't to you, PC Ifield should know of it.'

Phoebe looked at him with fear in her eyes. He was a man and, what's more, Isabel had said he was a dangerous man. She shouldn't trust him, but then there was no one else. ‘It wasn't a tramp.'

‘Whoever it was, did he –' Frank was nonplussed again. The girl needed a woman. Then he had an idea. ‘I'll take you to Miss Patricia, she's a friend of yours, I know, but before we go I must tidy you up a bit.' He pretended not to notice as she shrank back against the bines. ‘Here,' he produced a comb from the bag, ‘let me use this.'

Warily, Phoebe let him approach, and he tried to bind the heavy strands of dark hair up into some semblance of order, as he had once loved doing for his now dead wife. Then, as she seemed incapable of doing it herself, he twirled her round, buttoned up the neck of her dress, and tidied the sleeves and collar.

‘I reckon just now, Miss Phoebe,' he said quietly while he was doing it, ‘you think men are all beasts, but we're not. We're most of us just like you women, scared sometimes, bad sometimes, but meaning well. And you must think what men want of women is a violent, dirty thing. But it's not. It's the most wonderful gift God gave us when it's used right. It's like electricity: used wrong, it kills you, but used proper it glows with the brightest and sweetest light you ever did see.'

Bang, right on the head. The last nail. Percy eyed his handiwork with some satisfaction. Daisy had explained it was to help the war effort, and here it was, as neat a container as you ever would see. This was the sixth, and hidden behind the log piles. There was another in the coalhouse, two buried deep in the bushes down by the compost, one in the stable hayloft and another behind Fred's workroom. The decoy one in the Rectory cellar was the one the Germans were meant to find. At first he'd misunderstood, and thought that, despite Mrs Lilley's instructions, these containers for food was the food hoarding he'd read about which was unpatriotic. The Government had said so, and more importantly so had the Rector. Now Daisy had pointed out to him that they had been ordered by the King to deny the Germans access to everything; transport, money, petrol – and of course food – if they invaded. After all, if the Germans came marching in demanding billets, they couldn't fight 'em off with Master George's water pistol, could they? They'd have to be cunning, welcome them in, and deny them food. So all the Rectory supplies would have to be hidden.
All the same, Daisy had said, the Rector need not know about it just in case he got confused too.

Ten to one it was a lot of fuss about nothing, Percy thought. The British Expeditionary Force was protecting us now, and every day the newspapers were full of the glorious success our boys were having against the Germans. War had been declared over two weeks ago and no Germans had arrived in Sussex yet. Not troops, anyway. Plenty of spies, though, until the Government started rounding up and interning all the ones they'd planted years ago, pretending to be bakers, and butchers, or – Percy stopped short. He'd been going to say bandsmen, and then he remembered Rudolf. He had liked Rudolf, German or not; he pondered this problem for some time and concluded that his Lizzie must have knocked the evil out of him, so that he was almost English really. Still, suppose the Kaiser got hold of Rudolf and made him talk; persuaded him to tell him all about Hartfield and Ashden. They'd know where to come then. Perhaps the Misses Norville had been right to fortify Castle Tillow.

‘I'm sorry, Mother, but we
have
to go to do our VAD training. You know we signed on for six months minimum. It's nearly the end of August, and our three weeks' first aid course is finished on Friday. Provided we get our certificates we have to go on to the next stage.'

‘But on Saturday, so
soon.
And both of you. Felicia is so young, and you
are
volunteers. You are not being paid.'

‘I am eighteen, and we
are
going together. And we have a duty, payment or not,' Felicia answered.

Elizabeth was not reassured, but as Laurence came in from afternoon visiting, sought an ally. ‘Laurence. Caroline and Felicia say they have to leave us on
Saturday
for training in a hospital. That's only four days.'

‘Where are you going?' Laurence asked sharply.

‘To Shooters Hill in North Kent. The Royal Herbert Hospital is one of those that will receive wounded soldiers, if there are any, and they need VADs immediately, fully trained or not.'

‘To nurse
men.
' Elizabeth looked shocked.

‘I doubt if they'll want either of us to perform operations yet a while,' her daughter reassured her cheerfully. ‘Felicia's the one with the cool touch on the fevered brow, anyway. It's as much as I can do to roll a bandage. The victims run away when they see me
approaching.' The victims had been volunteers, scouts, schoolgirls, young women all eager to be bound into mummies with bandages by would-be nurses with more enthusiasm than aptitude.

Laurence relaxed. ‘Where will you live?'

‘We'll be billeted somewhere nearby.'

‘But we don't know anyone there,' Elizabeth pointed out alarmed.

‘We know each other,' Caroline said firmly, thinking how unlike her mother this anxiety was. She must be worse affected by worry about Isabel than she had realised.

‘Three of them absent,' Elizabeth said to her husband, as though they had already left. ‘It is frightening.' She did not say: How will I cope? for she knew somehow she would.

‘There is more worrying news,' Laurence said soberly.

‘About the army?' Caroline cried. She meant the British army, she meant Reggie. She had heard not a word since he had departed, though Sir John had reassured her this was natural with the army travelling.

‘The British have just had their first major confrontation with the enemy near a village called Mons. Apparently the engagement went well. Even so, the army may have to pull back a little way into France.'

Elizabeth broke the silence. ‘Withdraw? The British army
withdraw?
' We shall be invaded, was Elizabeth's immediate fear, but she did not voice it. ‘Laurence, let us pray. All of us. Caroline, please ask the servants to join us, and Felicia, find Phoebe and George.'

‘No.' Her father spoke so firmly that Caroline stopped halfway through the door.

‘We are one family.' Elizabeth was astounded.

‘All the more reason for us to think of them, my love. If we summoned them to prayer now, at four o'clock, they would immediately think invasion was imminent, or a catastrophe had taken place in Europe. It would be tantamount to erecting barbed wire around the Rectory itself, and that we cannot do. But we four can share our fears with our Lord, that He may give us strength.'

After some hesitation, Caroline decided to bid goodbye to Lady Hunney that very evening, and to go alone.

The Manor itself was in the process of being turned into a small, fully equipped hospital with twenty-four beds, staffed by a matron,
surgical and nursing staff, and part of a VAD detachment. Some of the Ashden heirlooms were stored in the cellars, others studded the Dower House. At first sight Maud Hunney looked smaller and less formidable in the Dower House, but it proved an illusion only, at least so far as Caroline was concerned. The iron-clad figure who rose to meet her arrayed in dinner gown and diamonds was as unbending as ever. If Caroline had had any hope that she and Lady Hunney would be drawn together by their common worry she found she was greatly mistaken.

‘Could I ask if you have news of Reggie or Daniel?'

‘I have not. Soldiers, Caroline, have other thoughts to occupy them than the women they leave behind. You must bear that in mind.'

She might have been talking of some slight acquaintance for all the emotion in her voice. Caroline smarted, yet it was her sons who were so far away. Did their silence not worry Lady Hunney as it did her, did she dislike her so much that she would betray nothing of her own feelings before her, or was she so hidebound in convention that her iron self-control would not yield even at such a time?

‘I bear in mind, Lady Hunney, that letters are hard to send with an army on the move.'

‘Possibly.' Lady Hunney paused. ‘Or indeed an army in battle.'

An arrow of fear leaped through her, stinging Caroline with fear and pain. ‘You think Reggie and Daniel are involved in this confrontation in Belgium?'

‘I cannot tell you that, for I do not know. My husband may, but he is not at liberty to discuss it with me. All I know is that Reggie left England on the 12th with the Royal Sussex, and Daniel a week or so later with the 1st King's Own.'

‘Thank you,' Caroline said quietly. The ice in Lady Hunney's voice had not melted at all. Even
The Times
was more forthcoming, but she forced herself to grant that somewhere deep within her Lady Hunney might possibly be human. In a sudden rush of compassion, she kneeled down beside her and took the cold hands in hers. ‘We are both suffering,' she said earnestly. ‘We both love him, can we not help each other through this terrible time?'

Wrong again, she realised immediately she had spoken. Her appeal was flung back in her face as Lady Hunney stood up, coolly disengaging herself.

‘Certainly. How good of you to call, Miss Lilley.'

The next morning, as Caroline was packing, an unaccustomed noise filled the Rectory. The Rector was
shouting
 – shouting for his wife, his daughters, his servants, anyone and everything. It was Ahab who reached him first, and even he got a hug for which he slobbered gratefully over Laurence's boots.

‘They are
safe
!' he yelled, as startled heads shot out over the balustrade upstairs and people rushed towards him from all directions on the ground floor.

Elizabeth was already racing down the stairs. ‘Isabel?'

‘Mrs Swinford-Browne the younger and husband returning today. Sir John has just telephoned; he had been in contact with the British Embassy on our behalf, though he could not tell us that at first. The steamer arrives at Folkestone this afternoon.'

‘Oh.' Elizabeth hurled herself into her husband's arms, and his happiness gave him the strength to whirl her off the ground and round in the air, to Harriet and Myrtle's gaping astonishment and Agnes's openly displayed satisfaction.

‘At last the governments of Europe have become sufficiently concerned to arrange for British civilians to have special railway trains. The Swiss Government sent 800 people by train to Paris yesterday, and Thomas Cook have organised their onward progress to England. The train left Paris at midnight, and the Embassy arranged for it to take some stranded holiday-makers in Paris. Our Isabel is one of them. The bad news from Belgium has concentrated everyone's minds wonderfully in Paris, thank goodness!'

‘There is panic?'

‘Apparently not; only great determination.'

‘To do what?'

Laurence gave her a warning glance, conscious of listening ears. He did not reply to her question.
The Times
today had revealed that, success or none, there had been two thousand casualties at Mons, and that the British and French armies had indeed stopped advancing and were pulling back a little. If they were pulling back, then the Germans would be advancing, from Belgium and from the east. Where after all would the Kaiser's armies be moving other than to converge on Paris?

By the afternoon it was raining and Caroline and Felicia had left for Tunbridge Wells, where they had arranged to stay for two days while they finished the course and took the certificate. Elizabeth acknowledged the good sense of this, with train schedules so uncertain nowadays, but nevertheless, even the knowledge that Isabel was returning failed to make the Rectory seem other than a large and almost empty shell. This was war, Elizabeth reminded herself. Countless families were suffering so. Sons had gone to the wars for hundreds of years; now daughters, for the first time, were following too. Laurence said the war might last till Christmas. Very well then, on Christmas she would set her hopes.