The Daisy Club (46 page)

Of course this wasn't true, but putting the house back together would take many, many years of hard work, years during which Daisy produced four children, all boys, which seemed to satisfy her Aunt Maude in a way that Daisy understood, but never remarked on.

Laura went back to France and, to her great delight, married Friquet, who was also delighted. They, too, repaired to a country house much damaged, not by a school, or the regular army, but by German officers.

Again it would take years before they could put it back to rights, years in which Laura and Friquet lived in a wing, very happily, and put themselves to work on the estate, producing anything and everything so that they could save up to buy the necessary building materials to restore the old place.

Only Maude, Branscombe and Alec and his brothers lived on at the Hall.

Alec married a local girl, and produced children, as did the others, except for Johnny, who became a jazz trumpeter, which, as Branscombe noted with some surprise, gave Maude a great excuse to go to jazz clubs and smoke cigarettes.

The two older inhabitants of the Hall often thought back to the bad times of the war, finally agreeing, over a nice glass of whisky, that what had come out of it was not victory so much as the fact that they had all pulled together, and that many barriers had been broken, and lives changed, in a good way.

But the truth was that, optimistic as they felt, knowing that people of all kinds had become kinder and more tolerant for knowing each other, for being put hugger-mugger in an untidy way together – the village, their Twistleton, was still wrecked.

Letters were written. Why would they not be? All kinds of remonstrations were made, but no one paid the slightest attention to the fact that Twistleton lay in ruins, roofs off The Cottages, doors swinging free, gardens overgrown, no part of it habitable except the pub, and the church – and even they were no longer as they had been, prey to so much theft and destruction . . .

‘Something must be done, something has to be done to help Twistleton,' the redoubtable old pair would say, and Alec, to whom Maude had finally willed the Hall – along with his brothers, and their descendants – would overhear this, and silently vow that he would do what he could when he could.

Epilogue

Guy stopped beckoning to the rest of the Daisy Club, and dropped his hands, indicating that they could all now sit down and enjoy their picnics.

It was their annual meeting, and no one, but no one, missed it, on pain of being dropped from the club. In the case of an absent member even sick notes from doctors had to be produced, which Daisy thought was a bit much, but which Guy nevertheless insisted upon, as he also insisted that all children and dogs were left at the Hall in the charge of Branscombe and Mary Fry.

They all shared their picnics and their drinks, and there was plenty of everything to go round, despite the fact that there was still rationing. Soon would come the speech, which, if it was raining, and the picnics had to be held in the old bomb-shelter to the side of the woods, was usually drowned out by the sound of the water pounding on the tin roof.

Today, however, was different, and they all knew it. Today, they had made up their minds, was the day when they were all going to decide once and for all on a plan of action.

‘We have had enough of talk,' Guy told them to the sound of murmurs of assent. ‘Now we have to plot a plan of action, and make sure that we carry it through – and we can carry it through. We have enough strength and purpose.'

‘But when can we do it?'

‘On a day when no one is looking, when everyone will be out celebrating, when the whole of this island will be celebrating the crowning of our dear Queen. That is the day we will reoccupy our dear Twistleton and fly the flag above the pub, and ring the church bells.'

‘How can we? What about the army? There are unexploded bombs everywhere.'

‘Not any more, there aren't,' Guy told the speaker, with his usual assurance. ‘Not any more. They have had it, as from next week they will be no more. I made sure that Gloria Martine—' There was a pause for laughter. He went on, ‘I mean the few people who still owe me for having me thrown into jug. I made sure through them that the powers-that-be arranged for them to be defused.' They all looked at each other in amazement, unable to quite believe what was being said. ‘And once that has happened we can start in on your beloved village, and let no man or woman step between it and us! So let us drink to being in this place this time next year, and our own beloved victory.'

Clive looked across an assortment of heads to where Guy was raising his glass to victory. He loved doing this sort of thing, and what was more he was very good at it. And of course the fact that he was back, all cosy at Longbridge Farm, made him feel for the villagers of Twistleton, who longed, constantly longed, to get back to their beloved homes.

The rest of the day was spent laughing and talking, and finally they all packed their picnics up, and headed back to the Hall for more drinks and a buffet, all part of their annual reunion.

As they left their seaside view and trailed back up the field again, their faces a little burned by the sun, their baskets feeling oddly light, their rugs not as smartly packed as they had been, Daisy thought about all the people they were missing.

Of course they had been replaced by the next generation currently being given tea by Branscombe and Mary up at the Hall, but they would never be quite the same as those who had gone – those bright-eyed spirits who had so willingly given their all to defend their homeland. She wondered for a thousandth time where they
were
, everyone whom they had known and loved, and who were now gone. Where
were
they?

And then it came to her. That they were the wind moving through the grass, the heads of the flowers swaying, they were the sea coming up to the edge of the beach, they were the rocks against which it tested its strength. They were the mystery of everything they had done, and the beauty of everything they had been. They were the length and breadth of love and kindness, and because of that, they would never be forgotten.