The Soldier's Daughter (40 page)

‘That’s why she don’t like comin’ over ’ere when Master Seb’s about,’ Mabel told them matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve seen ’im try to collar ’er before.’

Howel went towards the door again but his grandmother caught his arm and told him sternly, ‘That’s enough, Howel. I don’t want you to get into trouble with the police. You stay here and look after Talwyn. I’ll go and speak to Mrs Frasier – for what good it’ll do.’

While she was gone, Briony warmed some soup and encouraged Talwyn to swallow some of it. The buttons on her coat had popped off, as had the ones on her blouse, and Briony shuddered to think what might have happened if they hadn’t heard her.

When Mrs Dower came back her face was grim and Briony sent the children upstairs to get washed and changed. They had seen too much already as far as she was concerned, and knowing what Mabel had gone through, she dreaded to think how it might affect her.

‘Sacked us, has she?’ Howel asked miserably.

Mrs Dower snorted. ‘Of course not! Think, lad! Who else would she get to do what we do? You and your grandad alone do the work of four men about the place. No, she says she’ll have words with him. And from now on, we’ll keep a closer watch on Talwyn.’

She stooped to kiss her granddaughter tenderly on the cheek and asked, ‘Are you all right, my bird?’

When Talwyn nodded dumbly she let out a sigh of relief. ‘Well, I doubt we’ll see much of that one tonight. No doubt he’ll go and hide himself away in his room after he’s cleaned himself up a bit. But you have to let it go now, Howel. He’s had what was coming to him and that must be an end to it. Even
he
isn’t stupid enough to try a stunt like that again. Do you promise me?’

Howel nodded reluctantly, and stroking his arm, his grandmother said wearily, ‘You get Talwyn home now, and look after her till I get back. God knows what your grandad will have to say about all this. It’s enough to give him a heart attack. I think it might be best if we didn’t tell him about it, for there’s no saying what he might do.’

Howel opened his mouth to object, but then seeing the glint in his grandmother’s eye he rose slowly and held his hand out to his sister, who took it trustingly.

When they’d gone, Mrs Dower said heavily, ‘I’ve had my suspicions about the way he’s been watching poor Talwyn lately. And I don’t mind betting this isn’t the first time he’s tried it on with her. But you can take it from me: I won’t give that waste of skin a chance to touch her again.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Briony said tremulously but Mrs Dower shook her head.

‘There’s no need for you to go apologising,’ she told her. ‘But just make sure
you
keep your bedroom door locked. Who’s to say what that creature will do when he’s had a drink! I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, I wouldn’t.’ She sighed. ‘But now come on, this dinner isn’t going to cook itself.’

Briony rose without another word and began to chop some carrots, wishing with all her heart that Sebastian would clear off once and for all. Perhaps he would do so when the money ran out, and the way he was fleecing Mrs Frasier, that might be sooner than he thought.

It was 23 December, and as Briony sat wrapping up the presents she had bought she couldn’t help thinking of Christmases past. Her parents had never had a lot of money, but they had always made sure that Christmas was a joyous time. She and her father would go out and collect bunches of holly with bright red berries on and place it them in vases along the mantelpiece, and the family would sit together making pretty paper chains that James Valentine would attach to the walls and ceiling. On Christmas Eve they all hung their stockings up above the fireplace and in the morning would troop down together to open them. They had been such magical times, but she knew that they would never come again.

Her eyes strayed across the gifts on the table. She had bought Howel a thick pair of woollen gloves to keep his hands warm while he was working about the farm and a new pipe for Mr Dower. For dear Mrs Dower there was a set of Morny French Fern bath salts with matching soap.

Briony had purchased a simple wooden train set, carved by one of the older men in the village, for Alfie, and Mabel had the same doll she had bought for Sarah. She had also saved up and bought a silk headscarf in a rich royal blue for her grandmother, but she hadn’t got anything for Sebastian. From what she could gather he wasn’t going to be there anyway so it gave her a good excuse not to bother. There was only Alfie’s gift to wrap now – and then another lonely evening stretched ahead of her. She didn’t feel like listening to the wireless. The reports on the war were always so depressing and just made her worry about whether Ernie was still safe. There had been no word from him still, but she was trying her best to stay optimistic.

The back door was suddenly flung open and she started – until she saw that it was Howel. The wind was whistling past him and making the flames lick up the chimney as he dragged something into the kitchen before kicking the door shut. And then when she saw what it was, her eyes lit up.

‘
A Christmas tree!
How lovely – but where did you manage to get it?’

He leaned against the wall for a moment while he got his breath back, then explained, his eyes twinkling, ‘I had to go into the market today to order foodstuffs for the animals, so I picked up one for you and one for our grandma. She’s tickled pink with it. In fact, when I left she was putting the baubles on it. Here, look – she sent a few over for you. There aren’t that many, but I dare say the kids can make some paper decorations.’

Briony had an overwhelming urge to kiss him for being so thoughtful and generous. The children were going to be thrilled when they saw the tree the next morning.

‘I’ll go and find you a bucket to stand it in,’ he went on. ‘And by the time I’ve done, I reckon I’ll have earned a nice cup of cocoa.’

He went back out into the biting wind as Briony walked around the tree admiring it before rushing away to measure out milk in the pan for their cocoa.

In no time at all he was back with a bucket of earth, and once he’d planted the tree in it he asked, ‘So where do you want me to put it?’

‘Over there by the dresser, I think,’ Briony decided. ‘We can see it when we’re having our Christmas dinner then. Oh, I really don’t know how to thank you! This is just such a
wonderful
surprise. But let me pay you for it. You must have had to buy it.’

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ he retorted as he dragged the bucket into position. ‘And if you even mention doing that again, I’ll be mighty offended. Call it an early Christmas present from me to you and the children.’

‘Thank you,’ she said softly as she reached out to squeeze his hand. ‘You really are a lovely man, Howel.’

He flushed and turned to hold his hands out to the fire as she went to put the pan on to the gas. But not lovely enough, he thought grimly as a picture of Ernie looking handsome in his uniform passed in front of his eyes.

Once he was seated at the table with a fragrant mug in front of him, Briony cut him a generous slice of the jam sponge cake she had baked that afternoon.

‘I’m sorry it’s a bit plain,’ she said. ‘I ran out of icing sugar. Some things are hard to get now, even living here.’

He nodded in agreement. ‘You’re right there, but we’re still a lot better off than most of the country, and at least we’ll be having a nice fat juicy goose for Christmas dinner. I read in the newspaper that most families inland will be lucky to get an old fowl. Now, how’s Mrs Frasier?’ he asked then and Briony shrugged.

‘I can’t make her out,’ she said, taking a sip of her drink and then blowing on it as it was boiling hot. ‘Sometimes she can talk as lucidly as you and I are doing now, but then at other times she doesn’t even seem to know where she is.’

‘I reckon losing the master tipped her over the edge.’ His face hardened. ‘And that swine of a son of hers doesn’t help matters. Is he in?’

‘I don’t think so. I heard him tell his mother he wouldn’t be back till the day after Boxing Day.’

‘Good!’ Howel grunted. ‘At least we’ll be able to have Christmas in peace. But it just goes to show what sort of a character he is. I mean, who’d go off and leave their mother like that when she’s just lost her husband
and
her daughter?’ He bit his lip. The daughter he was speaking of was also Briony’s mother. He muttered hastily, ‘Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I know you must miss your mother too.’

‘I do!’ Briony said chokily. She stared down into her cup as she blinked back tears. ‘But it helps somehow knowing that she’s close. I go up to the churchyard sometimes when I’ve taken the children to school, and . . . and I talk to her.’ She added, ‘I know she’s gone, of course, but it just sort of consoles me.’

‘I can imagine it would.’

He would have said more, but at that moment the door creaked open and a sleepy-eyed Mabel appeared, knuckling the sleep from her eyes.

‘I ‘ad a bad dream,’ she said in a wobbly voice, and before Briony could say anything, Howel patted his lap.

‘Come and sit with me for a while then,’ he encouraged her. ‘We’ll talk about Father Christmas and all his reindeer, and chase the bad dreams away, eh?’

Mabel pottered over to him and clambered onto his lap, and again Briony thought what a remarkably nice man he was. And so good with the children too. He would make a wonderful husband and father one day for some lucky girl. Her thoughts suddenly rolled back to Megan’s words at the dance hall,
I can’t remember a time when he looked at me as he looks at you now
.

Hastily gathering the empty cups, she carried them to the sink and ran cold water over them. Megan was so wrong, she told herself. Howel and I are just friends. He knows that I love Ernie. She wondered then what sort of Christmas Ernie might be having as she wiped down the wooden draining board.

Christmas Day passed as pleasantly as it could do under the circumstances, and Mabel and Alfie were thrilled with their presents. Mrs Frasier had bought her grandson a lovely toy car that Briony guessed must have cost a fortune. It had proper little windows, and the car doors and the boot on it opened, and when he wound it up it zoomed across the kitchen. There were no presents for Mabel or Briony, not that she had expected any. When she served her grandmother her breakfast on Christmas morning, Briony gave her the silk scarf.

‘Oh!’ the woman said in surprise once she had opened it. ‘It’s er . . . very nice. Thank you.’ It was the nearest she had ever come to being civil to her, and for Briony that was enough. Marion looked so lonely sitting at the enormous dining table all alone that she couldn’t help but feel sorry for her.

‘You could come into the kitchen and have your Christmas dinner with us, or we could come in here and have it with you, if you preferred?’ she suggested.

The woman hesitated for a second as the silk scarf pooled in her lap, reflecting the light from the window, but then she shook her head. ‘Thank you, but we will leave things as they are.’

Briony sighed – but at least she had tried and she could do no more.

It was the day before New Year’s Eve when Mrs Dower told Briony, ‘There’s another dance on at the village hall tomorrow, and Howel wondered if you might like to go with him. It would beat sitting here all on your own and I’d be happy to keep an eye on the children. I can bring my knitting over and listen to the wireless. Be a change from breathing in my husband’s pipe smoke.’

Mrs Dower had recently taken to unravelling every woollen garment she could get her hands on, and she used Alfie and Mabel to help her wind the wool into balls for reusing, to knit socks for the troops. ‘It makes me feel as if I’m doing my bit for the war,’ she confided. Then, staring at her latest efforts, she tutted: ‘Trouble is, they’re more holey than righteous. Still, what’s a few dropped stitches, eh? At least they’ll keep our boys’ feet warm.’

Briony’s first instinct was to refuse the invitation because this Christmas had been the first one without her parents, and she had felt their loss greatly. But then she thought of another lonely night sitting in on her own and accepted. Social events were few and far between, here in the back of beyond, so she knew she should make the most of them.

Howel called for her, looking very dapper in his one and only suit and a crisp white shirt and once Briony had kissed the children goodnight they set off. It was a bitterly cold but wonderfully clear night and a million stars twinkled above them.

‘Why is it that there always seem to be so many more stars in the sky here than there were back at home?’ she mused.

He looked up and shrugged. Never having lived anywhere else, he had never known any different. ‘Perhaps it’s because we’re by the sea?’ he offered. ‘But put your arm through mine now. There’s a rare frost on the ground and we don’t want you to do the foxtrot before we even get there, which is a possibility in those shoes.’

Briony giggled as she did as she was told, secretly pleased to have a strong arm to hold.

Once again they found far more women than men at the dance, but it didn’t spoil their enjoyment. Everyone had a good time. The band were elderly, but good musicians for all that, and those present danced and let their hair down, praying that the coming year might herald the end of the war.

Just before midnight, they all formed a circle and joined hands, and someone switched the wireless on to hear Big Ben in Westminster chime in the New Year. And then the haunting sound of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ echoed from the rafters of the village hall as they all sang, and Briony felt a choking lump form in her throat. ‘Goodbye, Mum, goodbye, Dad, sleep tight,’ she whispered. But then everyone was kissing each other and wishing each other a Happy New Year, and when Howel pulled her into his arms she went willingly, glad to feel the contact of another human being.

‘Happy New Year, Briony.’ His eyes were shining in the dim light and he pecked her on the cheek. And then their eyes locked and before she knew it his lips came down on hers and just for the briefest of moments she responded before suddenly pulling away. What was she thinking of? She loved Ernie. Her lips felt as if they were on fire and her cheeks were burning . . . but then someone else spun her about and kissed her cheek, and she didn’t feel so bad. Everyone kissed each other on New Year’s Eve, so what was she getting so worried about? It was then that she saw Megan Brown sidle up to Howel and kiss him soundly and she felt a little pang of jealousy.