The Daisy Club (32 page)

‘Pull the wishbone with me, Miss Maude?' Branscombe asked.

Maude nodded. She had always hoped to be the one chosen to pull the wishbone by their father, if only so she could offer it to young Roderick, who always closed his eyes and said his wish out aloud, inevitably spoiling the whole effect.

‘Look at that, you've only gone and won it!' Branscombe nodded approvingly at the wishbone that Miss Maude was holding. ‘Now, I wonder what you will wish for, Miss Maude?'

Maude closed her eyes. She knew just what she would wish.

She wished, how she wished, for her darling Daisy to come home to the Hall.

She had known now for some time that she should never have behaved the way she had towards Daisy. Her only excuse was that she had found it unbearable seeing her going off like that, seeing the look in her eyes, the replica of that in her poor dead mother's, Maude's sister-in-law, who had been piloting a plane to Deauville just after the war, when it had crashed, leaving Maude to bring up Daisy. Maude just hadn't been able to face even the idea of losing Daisy, so had disinherited her, cut her off rather than have to wait around in that unbearable way, waiting, always waiting, to hear that she had been lost.

She knew now she had reacted in a way she should never have done. She must make it right after Christmas, make everything right again.

Mentally she raised her eyes to heaven. Sorry, God! Awful war, awful war, it did it for one finally, one reacted in a foolish fashion, and then regretted it.

Branscombe stared at her as she opened her eyes.

Maude stared back at him, waving the wishbone.

‘I was just wishing that Miss Daisy would come home!'

Branscombe smiled, but at the same time he shook his head.

‘Never reveal your wish, Miss Maude, didn't your nanny tell you that?'

They both laughed, and then Maude turned away. Well, never mind that, she had told her wish, and nothing could be done about it now. The truth was that just the sight of Daisy would be the best Christmas present she could have had. Just the sight of her swinging through the double doors into the Hall, eyes sparkling, bubbling over with excitement, bursting to tell her old Aunt Maude a story.

The worst of it was just how much she despised herself for being so scared of loss that she had banished the one person she truly loved from her life. The truth was that the burden of her grief, untold for so many years after the Great War, had somehow swelled up inside her, and she had been unable to contain her dread of losing Daisy. She had banished her instead, when she should have known that nothing could protect a loved one, nothing but prayer, and hope.

Chapter Ten

The calendar said February 1941, but as far as Jean was concerned it was really saying ‘only three weeks to go'.

‘You should be careful about that baby of yours,' Freddie had spent the last few months warning her. ‘It will be born running, and much sooner than it should, if you go on as you do.'

Jean shrugged her shoulders.

‘If it was going to be born sooner, Freddie, it would have happened in the trap by now. Bounce, bounce, bounce!'

Freddie, half-asleep after her night-work, gently pushed Jean back down into the old kitchen chair, and for a few seconds she sank gratefully back against the old Liberty flower-printed cushions that lined it.

‘Sit you down, Mrs Huggett duckie, and let me make you a nice cup of warming tea.'

Jean struggled to get up.

‘I can't stay for a cup of tea, Freddie. I have to get on, truly I do.'

‘Those girls of yours, what are they for, Jean? Leave it to them, for goodness' sake.'

‘Those girls of mine, as you call them, are all down with influenza. High temperatures, the lot. Doctor Blackie called last evening when you had gone off to the hospital. Came across on his horse, and he says that half the troops in the village have got the same bug. I could see he was hoping that it wasn't Spanish flu.'

Both young women looked at each other. They had grown up with people talking in low tones about the Spanish flu epidemic of 1917, which had taken off millions of people. When it did not kill, it had often left people unconscious to the world, graven images locked into hospital beds, unaware of their condition, their loved ones left grieving for people who were dead, and yet not dead.

‘What a winter! Enough to get us down, it is, really,' Freddie murmured, putting a kettle on the old kitchen range. It would take so long to heat up, she knew that they would be lucky to have a cup of tea before dinner was on the table.

‘Trust the troops to bring a bug into Twistleton. Doctor Blackie said that we haven't had anything like this for years and years.'

‘The trouble is most of the men, well, they're not from these parts, so they have no respect for anything or anybody. If they were the North Wessex or the South or North Wiltshires it might be different, but no, they're from all over, and care nothing about Twistleton and us.'

‘I gather most of the village street has been shelled since General what's-his-name graced Twistleton with his presence.'

Jean stared at Freddie, realising at once from what she had just said that she could hardly have left the Hall for weeks.

‘Are you no longer going to the hospital, Freddie?'

‘Of course I am,' Freddie asserted stoutly, throwing back her plait of brown hair. ‘I'm on nights at the moment, and in between I take charge here, trying to help out as much as possible. I go across the fields on my bicycle, with no lights at this time of year – it is certainly very interesting, my deah!' she joked.

Jean seemed satisfied by this, but she still refused the cup of precious black tea on offer, and after struggling to her feet she finally walked off into the bitter weather to try and do something useful about the place. Cows had to be brought in for milking.

The cows were out today, and they might be hard to get in, but they were good girls all of them, no trouble to milk, no trouble to feed, not a kicker amongst them, and, despite the land girls being down with the influenza, with the Lindsay boys to help her she could cope.

Freddie yawned as she watched Jean waddling off, bursting out of her woollies and clumping along in her farm boots. Then she gave a small exhausted sigh. She could hardly put one foot in front of the other. She closed her eyes, and sat back down in the chair. Jean was still a very pretty girl with her wild black curls and her beautiful complexion, but nowadays, despite the pregnancy bloom, she was looking tired and anxious. Frankly, now that she was so far gone, she was nothing but a worry, and to Branscombe too. Both he and Freddie complained almost hourly that Jean was doing far too much, most especially in her condition. And now, of course, with the girls all abed with fevers, the nagging feeling that she should have her feet up, and not be chasing cows over all but frozen fields, persisted.

Freddie never thought she would think it, let alone say it, but only the previous evening she and Branscombe had raised their poor old glasses, and thanked heaven for the Lindsay boys. Without them there would be cows with full udders all over the place, not to mention vegetables not dug, pigs not swilled, and eggs not collected.

In the end a decision had had to be made, and Freddie had made it the week before. She was so worried about Jean that she had swapped her duties at the hospital for being on nights, the better to keep a sleepy eye on the poor girl during the day. Branscombe could keep an eye and an ear out for her at night, since they were both housed in the stables.

‘The moment that baby starts, Branscombe, if it starts at night, you must send Jean to the hospital. If you can't go with her, send Alec, send Dick, send anyone, not Miss Beresford, obviously, especially not now that she has the influenza.' She stopped. ‘Have we checked on Miss Beresford, by the way, Branscombe?'

Branscombe nodded.

‘Doctor Blackie visited this morning, after he was called out to the stables to the land girls. Don't you worry, Miss Freddie, I made sure of that. But you know Miss Beresford, it is all I can do to make her stay in bed, even though Doctor Blackie told me her temperature is worryingly high. Of course one of her troubles is that her room is such a freezing great barn at the best of times, and now – well, frankly, you would be warmer standing outside.'

Freddie felt impatient. She couldn't help it. Everything at the Hall, unlike the poor old Court, was half-done, nothing really completed, tiles off the roof, pipes still stuffed with last year's leaves, chimneys with rooks' nests. Had the army not been occupying the Court, she would have suggested that they all move into Aunt Jessica's house, but that was not possible, or even permissible, now. She paused, remembering how hard Jessica had worked to keep the Court going, to keep it in model-farm condition, and now even to pass it on foot or bicycle was too painful for words. She was only thankful that her aunt was away, and could only hope that by the time she came back, something would have happened to right it. Although she somehow doubted that.

Branscombe kept saying, in a sombre voice, ‘Once the army have been in, Miss Freddie, a house never recovers.' Needless to say, it was a statement that did nothing to cheer the listener. Now he was saying, ‘We could try and light a fire for Miss Maude in that little grate in her bedroom, but I'm afraid that it will catch the chimney on fire. There are so many birds' nests stuck down all the chimneys they start to smoke within a minute. It's a wonder the whole place hasn't caught fire years ago, really it is, Miss Freddie.'

It was true. The rooks had long made their homes in the myriad chimneys above the Hall roof. With their nests preventing any fires, it was no wonder that Miss Maude's room was such a freezing great barn, and all the chimney-brushes Branscombe had managed to find had been too decrepit to use, or too short for the flues. Cleaning these chimneys would be a job for a professional, whenever they could find one.

Freddie dreaded going up to Miss Maude's room. It was not just that it was freezing, and that the jugs of water in the pretty flowered basin and carafes were literally iced over. It was that, despite its lovely Edwardian furnishings, its many covered tables of floral chintz, its plethora of silver-framed photographs, its mahogany bed with velvet trimmings and graceful curtains of such intricately pleated silk that they caught the eye even more than the paintings of ancestors on the walls, it was the saddest place in the world. The room of a spinster daughter who had been left alone to struggle on, to cope as best she could, winter after winter, with burst pipes and freezing weather – and, worst of all, with impossible standards, keeping up the facade all alone, when everyone else had gone.

There was a painting over the chimneypiece of a young boy with dark curly hair, who was staring out at the onlooker as he must have stared out at Gainsborough. He had a slight frown, as if he was hoping that this dull business of sitting for a painter for his portrait would be over soon, as if he was longing to be allowed to scramble out of his red velvet suit with its large lace collar and its large lace cuffs, and run off into the grounds of the Hall with the gardener, or the gamekeeper, or his tutor – anyone who would allow him to pick up his fishing rod, or chase after his dog, or shoot a rabbit, anyone who would allow him to enjoy himself as he wanted. Freddie knew from something that Miss Maude had said that the boy in the painting was the spit of her brother Roderick, and it made her sad, so that when she went into the room she dropped her eyes rather than catch sight of the portrait, however beautiful.

‘I will check on Miss Maude later, Branscombe, before I leave for night duty, but for the moment I think she should be allowed to rest. So, don't you worry about it.'

‘Miss Maude is a tough old bird,' Branscombe muttered to the dogs, once Freddie had gone back to bed. ‘Take more than a bout of influenza to carry off Miss Maude, take more than a regiment of Nazi soldiers, take more than I like to think. Come on, off up the kitchen stairs, time we all went for our constitutional.'

Branscombe looked round at the gaggle of assorted dogs, and then once again, out of habit and before he could check himself, he looked round for young Johnny.

Dear, dear, he really must be getting old to keep on looking for what was definitely not there. He climbed up into the hall followed closely by the dogs, his old army coat wrapped tightly round him, his mittened hands holding on to various leads. He hadn't heard from anyone about Johnny. Hope he got delivered to Peckham all right. Hope the train was all right. Hope that he wasn't missing Twistleton Hall too much, and his brothers of course, hope he wasn't missing them. The Lindsay boys were all turning out to be the mainstay of the place. Alec and Dick helping with the cows and the rest, and Tom always on hand to run errands. They were a tribute to Peckham, and to themselves, really and truly they were. And more than that, the fact that they had changed physically so much for the better was a source of some pride to Branscombe. Where once their faces had been pallid, and their ribcages like toast-racks, now they were well-covered, and their eyes bright as the pony's when he saw his feed bucket coming towards him on a frosty morning.

Branscombe pushed open one of the pair of old half-glassed doors and gasped.
Brrrh!
The marble-floored hall behind him was hardly what anyone would call warm, but once the door was open, and the dogs squeezing past him, the full force of winter cold seemed to hit him not just in the face, but, even as he gasped, in the back of his mouth. The truth was that the air was so cold it hurt.

Branscombe pulled his knitted hat further down his ears, and his old coat tighter round him, thankful for once that he had only one eye uncovered, one eye exposed to the cold. The dogs pulled him along their usual route. The lake ahead was frozen over, and the trees so stilled and frost-covered that they might have been sculptures. The studs on his old army boots rang out on the hard ground as he walked briskly along, the pugs on their leads, the dachshunds at his heels. He liked to cover a good distance after luncheon – it gave him much-needed energy when he needed it – thankful always that the park was so hidden that neither the army in the village nor those at the Hall could see each other. So there was no grim sight of tanks on manoeuvres, although the sounds that rang out of poor old Twistleton these days made his heart sink, and he an army man since he was a boy.