The Daisy Club (45 page)

Maude stared. She had never been less composed, and yet Branscombe, it seemed, had never been more composed.

‘How do you mean, disappointed?'

Branscombe gave Maude his long, one-eyed stare.

‘I had a feeling it was going to happen, Miss Maude, as I am sure you did, too, and I got wind yesterday that it was going to come to this, but it won't. They can't have him, see, because he is not here.'

‘He isn't?'

Maude looked round, only now realising that the kitchen was empty of everyone except the dogs and Johnny.

‘No, young Ted has gone for a holiday, and will only be back once the adoption papers are through. And that might take some weeks.'

Maude sat down suddenly.

‘What can we say, then?'

‘Nothing. We say nothing. Only that his mother left him to Miss Freddie in her will, which she did, and that Miss Freddie and her husband have officially adopted him, and that they will be in touch, once Ted has enjoyed his holiday.'

Maude put a hand up to her head, always a forbidden gesture when she was young, no matter how ferocious the headache.

‘I'm not sure that I can cope any more, Branscombe. Do you think you could take this message up to them? Say to them what you have said to me.'

‘With pleasure.'

Branscombe took off his apron, pulled on his formal black coat, brushed his trousers, and said to Johnny, ‘You stay here and guard Miss Maude until I get back.'

As soon as he saw MacNaughton again, and his new wife, Branscombe remembered how much he hated men like him, and wives like her, jumped-up tarts. He had been in the Great War with the MacNaughtons of this world, overbearing monsters, all of them. Couldn't wait to call their men cowards and shoot them, while themselves cowering behind the lines.

His one eye now took in the Huggetts. Most respectable, two or three generations into respectability, but so cold, so hard, so snobbish. They had hurt poor Jean Shaw's feelings to such a degree it didn't bear thinking of, it really did not. The poor girl, working her fingers to the bone on the farm, losing her husband, all she had wanted was for them to acknowledge her child.

‘But they never will, Branscombe,' she had said. ‘Not ever. So in the event I don't survive, I have left my baby to Freddie and you and Miss Maude to bring up.'

Of course Branscombe had insisted that she would live, which of course the poor girl did not, but she did make a will leaving Ted to Freddie, and, for her own reasons, Branscombe and Miss Maude.

It was Miss Maude, grown so fond of Ted – not to mention Alec and his brothers, not to mention Johnny – who had got it into her head that Freddie and Ben should adopt Ted officially. It was quick and easy enough to do, once the knot was tied, and in wartime, even quicker and easier than at any other time, when the authorities rubber-stamped any adoption, if only to get the babies into homes, and out of care.

‘Ted is not here,' Branscombe began, rather enjoying himself.

‘Ted? Who is Ted?' Susan Huggett asked her husband in tones of suppressed fury.

‘Ted is Miss Jean's, Mrs Joe Huggett's, only surviving child. Her son. He is not here, if he is what you have come for.'

‘Soon change that name . . .'

‘He is away on his holidays, and will be back when they are over.'

‘He will be found, and at once,' the brigadier rapped out, while banging one finger on the table to the side of him.

‘Mind that table, sir, it has been here two hundred years, and it might not be feeling too well. Yes. Now, where was I? Yes, Ted Huggett is away, and will be back when, and not before, his holidays are over, after which he will be staying with his new parents, Mr and Mrs Benjamin Bastable. They have adopted him—'

‘But they can't!'

‘They have adopted him, in line with the wishes of his poor mother's will. He will keep his surname as Huggett, but he will be brought up by Mr and Mrs Bastable, in line with his mother's wishes.' He turned to the Huggetts. ‘Since you now wish to take an interest in him, I am sure the Bastables will be only too happy to ask you round to tea, or let you visit him on previously arranged occasions. When he is older you will want to see him play in matches at his school, and that, too, will be perfectly in order, I am sure. But now, for now, I must ask you all to leave, if only because there is nothing more to stay for.'

‘You haven't heard the last of this,' Roger Huggett shouted from the bottom of the Hall steps.

Branscombe shook his head at him. Huggett had always seemed such a nice man, before the war, but war changed everything, mostly people. He himself climbed carefully down the dark stairs to the kitchen, only too relieved that the whole unpleasant business was over.

‘All done and dusted,' he told Maude in a matter-of-fact voice.

‘How did you know that something was in the offing, Branscombe?'

‘I have my spies, as you know, Miss Maude. The brigadier's wife, as you know, once worked here—'

‘She did indeed.'

‘She's a bit of a goer, as they say. One of the guards, well, what can I say? To put it another way, I came by information that she had been in contact with Ted's grandparents, about the boy. It happened because she and the brigadier are living in Holly House, where the Huggetts were. The rumour was that she wrote to them, the brigadier's wife, saying how much like Joe the boy was becoming, all that kind of thing. Mischief-maker, as so many women like that are. So down they came, eventually, and up to the Hall, as we saw this morning; but we got him out of here before any more mischief could be done, didn't we, Miss Maude?'

‘It seems we did. Who's he with, Branscombe? Who is Ted holidaying with?'

‘Why, Miss Daisy, of course.'

Maude stood up.

‘That will never do. Daisy knows nothing about children!'

Branscombe threw her a suddenly affectionate look.

‘It is more than Miss Daisy's life's worth for her to let anything happen to the little chap. Besides, it will do her good, Miss Maude, take her mind off her beau!'

‘Daisy has a beau?'

‘I believe so, Miss Maude. I believe so.'

‘Well, you do surprise me. She's become so masculine, always in that uniform, smoking and doubtless swearing, in and out of planes. I'm surprised that any man has taken an interest in her!'

They both laughed, knowing that Daisy would never have any trouble in attracting men, only in settling down with one.

Daisy was lodging in the country, so it was easy for her to take on Ted – indeed she delighted in doing so – and even easier to find someone local to look after him while she went on ferrying planes. Mary Fry was a nice local girl with a fresh-faced complexion and an easy way with children, which was evident from the start.

‘I'm the eldest of eight, miss, so there's nothing I can't tell you about children.'

‘Gracious, no trouble for you when it comes to motherhood, then.'

Mary Fry looked across at Daisy. It was a look of such good-humoured cynicism that it actually made Daisy, who was half-way out of the door making for the factory, laugh.

‘After bringing up my brothers and sisters, you're not going to catch me having babies, and a husband, Miss! I know too much about it.'

Daisy shook her head, seeing her point, and then shut the door behind her, dropping the latch back. Sauntering down the front path to the country road, it occurred to her that she had found the perfect nanny.

‘What are you looking so complacent about?' David asked her as he drove her to the airfield, later.

‘Nothing, and everything.'

He stopped the car.

‘I'll pick you up tonight, and we can go back to the cottage and map out the rest of our lives – once the war is over.'

‘Twenty-four-hour leave is usually arranged by clever people to coincide so that they can be together during that twenty-four hours, but not, it seems, the future Mr and Mrs David Moreton. Oh, expletive! My watch is slow – oh, double expletive! Look what I can see on the tarmac waiting for me! Only a something, something Walrus—'

David left her. Happily for both of them, the distance that the planes from this particular factory had to go was very short indeed. They were only short hops, and that meant David would be seeing her this afternoon, before he, too, went back to his duties.

Just before he drove off, he saw her turn and wave back to him, and the sight caught at his heart. He loved his darling Daisy more than he would have thought possible. Now they just had to win the war, and then they could be married, not before. Both of them were determined about that.

As Daisy said, joking, ‘We don't want to do anything in a hurry, do we?'

But it took so long to win the war. So long, and the end – well, it seemed that it would never, ever come. First it was going to be now, then it was going to be quite soon, then in a few weeks. First the Allies had to re-invade France, and just the thought of climbing up those Normandy beaches under fire made Daisy shudder, and then Paris had to be taken, and then, and then . . .

It sometimes seemed to them all that the war, the real war, not just their war – fighting their local difficulties – but the battles, and the news from around the world, was being won, or lost, by the wireless around which they all liked to cluster for the news.

Finally VE Day came, and finally, too, all the celebrations could happen, but not in Twistleton, only at the Hall.

At the Hall they had a bonfire, and the children all danced around it, and they had hot drinks, and Freddie and everyone gave out little whistles and paper hats they had made and painted themselves. It was good, and it was fun, but in so many ways, the adults knew that they were too tired to really feel anything any more. Too tired to really take stock, until finally there was Churchill, good old Churchill, on the balcony, and the King and Queen, God bless them, and the crowds were cheering really hard – and at this point most people had gone home. But, in the case of everyone at the Hall, they couldn't, because the army still occupied their homes, or what was left of them.

They had been told that they would be paid compensation, but none was forthcoming.

They had been told that the army would make good the damage, but they did nothing of the sort.

‘It's disgraceful,' Guy exclaimed when he drove over with Clive and Aurelia, and they surveyed the ruins that had once been Twistleton. ‘Bad enough winning a war without having to fight your own army, as well.'

Longbridge Farm was a sad sight, too, but not nearly as sad as Twistleton.

The new building restrictions meant that both the farm and the village would stay as they were until such time that the former owners could gain the necessary permissions, which Guy, because he was Guy, was able to do, but the people of Twistleton could not.

‘They even shot the faces off some of the tombs in the graveyard, did you know that, Miss Maude? And off the gargoyles over the church door, sir. They even shot bits off our church.' The one-time owner of the pub shook his head, and tears filled his eyes. ‘And now look at the Court, Miss Jessica's old place: nothing left of it, except the ground floor. What will happen to that, I wonder?'

Guy shook his head, and Clive tugged at Aurelia's hand, and they all walked quickly on.

‘What will happen now, Clive?' Aurelia wanted to know.

Clive shook his head.

‘Probably blasted nothing,' he said, as politely as he could. ‘Blasted nothing, but we must see, that is all we can do.'

They all went back to Longbridge Farm, knowing that it would take months and months, possibly years, before Guy could even begin work on it, but at least it was not a shell, at least it was recognisable.

But even there their spirits sank as they realised that the white sofas so favoured before the war looked a little silly now, more than silly, as objects of luxury always do when the bad times come. Guy found himself staring at them, wondering why he had prized them so much, thought them so smart.

‘There will be parties here again,' he declared. ‘We will laugh again,' he told the walls blackened by damp. ‘We will overcome this next silent war, as we have overcome the last. We will live to be happy on another day, because not to be is finally to be defeated.'

Clive and Aurelia, married now, and living in what had once been old Bob's cottage, looked after the farm during the week, when Guy was in London or abroad overseeing the production of much-wanted comedies. They had no luck producing children, for no reason that they could ascertain, but after a while they settled for a great many animals, which seemed to make up for their lack of fecundity. Particularly, as Clive often remarked, the cats.

Everyone who had been at the Hall during the war was told that they could stay on, and for as long as they liked; but most wanted to go back to their civilian lives, where they could attempt to find some kind of peace and privacy, and start living properly again, which was only natural.

Freddie and Ben were renting a cottage near Oxford, where she could nurse and he could continue to study and work on the designs of his new bicycle. Naturally they took Ted with them, which was a wrench for Maude and Branscombe.

Daisy and David, and the redoubtable Mary Fry, went to live at the lodge of David's parents' country house, which had been turned into a school for the duration, and was now a wreck.

‘It'll take about fifty years to put it all back to rights, won't it?' Daisy joked when they had finished walking round it. ‘As a matter of fact, I'm not sure that schoolboys don't do more harm than the army.'