Alice's Girls (12 page)

‘Good afternoon,’ he said, and smiling, got to his feet and approached the strangers.

‘The cream teas are very good here! Please sit down!’ He led them to one of the small tables, and by the time they were seated, Rose had risen to the occasion and was delivering plates of warm scones together with jam, cream and a large pot of tea to their table while Alice encouraged her girls to indulge in small talk and behave like regular customers.

‘And what about that Edward John!’ Evie exclaimed when, later, the events of the afternoon were being discussed. ‘Proper little gent he was! Showin’ ’em to their table! Sittin’ ’em down!’

‘That’s boarding school for you,’ Gwennan announced. ‘They get taught ’ow to conduct theirselves proper. It’s like that thing they say about the playing fields of Eton.’ The girls looked blankly at her.

‘You don’t half talk a lot of baloney, Taff!’ someone murmured.

‘It’s not baloney! It’s to do with the Battle of Trafalgar!’ Gwennan protested. ‘But what would you lot know about it! Dead ignorant, that’s your trouble.’ Then, being slightly unsure of her facts, Gwennan opted for silence.

With the tea shop now up and running, Rose contrived to bake her scones and serve her cream teas every afternoon and, having met her costs, was encouraged by the small amounts of money she was regularly able to deposit into her savings account. Being a practical woman her concerns soon turned to the future of her son.

‘’Course, if you was to wed, Dave, I’d go and live over me tea shop. Ever so convenient, it’d be, and I’d like being back in the village. But I ’as to live ’ere for now, on account of ’avin’ to cook your dinner of a night, whereas if you was to wed, you’d ’ave your wife to cook for you.’ Dave agreed, without paying much attention to his mother, that this was so. But he was, after all, her baby boy. Her son and heir. So of course she would cook his meals, darn his
socks and wash his clothes. If he had a wife it would be different. But he hadn’t. So it wasn’t. He took his chop bone in his fingers, and with his teeth, stripped it of its remaining meat.

‘So what about your Hester?’ his mother asked suddenly – Hester not having been much mentioned since Dave’s last attempt to fetch her from her home to his.

‘What about ’er?’ he mumbled.

‘Well, do you want her or don’t you, Dave? And if you do, what are you going to do about it, eh?’

‘Reckon there’s nothing more I
can
do about it, Ma. ’Er knows how I feels about ’er. I’ve told ’er more’n once as I’ll fetch ’er any time she wants me to. She on’y ’as to say the word. But
she
’as to say it, Ma. It ’as to come from
’er
now. I bain’t goin’ creepin’ over to ’er place no more, beggin’ ’er.’

‘So you’m gonna let pride stand in the way of ’appiness, is that it?’

‘It wouldn’t be ’appiness, Ma! And it bain’t pride. More like a bit of self-respect, is all.’ She watched him lick the grease from the lamb off his fingers.

Christopher dropped Georgina at the farmhouse gate, reversed the truck and drove away.

‘We’ve told my parents,’ she said when she found Alice in the linhay, folding the sheets and towels she had just brought in from the washing line.

Apart from Alice the hostel was empty. Rose was at her tea room and the land girls were lifting the carrot crop on the far side of the higher farm.

‘Including the bit about you emigrating?’ Alice asked.

‘Yes.’ Georgina said. ‘Including that bit. And Chris is on his way to see his father.’

Roger assumed, when his son tapped on the farm office door, that he had come to discuss arrangements regarding the harvesting of a plantation of softwoods which, when
felled, would be delivered to a local sawmill and cut into lengths for use as pit props.

‘I can let you have Dave Crocker for a week,’ Roger told him. ‘Jack can do the driving and I might be able to borrow a couple of Lucas’s POWs if you think you’d need them.’ He glanced at his son, sensing that something other than the woodland was the subject of his visit. ‘Something on your mind, Chris?’ he asked, offering a cigarette, and when Christopher declined, lighting his own and inhaling deeply, almost, Christopher thought, as though bracing himself for whatever was to come.

‘Thing is, Pa, I have some rather big news.’ His father sat, his eyes on his son’s face, and listened as Christopher told him how his increasing interest in arboriculture had led him to study the subject, how he had successfully completed various required courses and reached a level that had resulted in the offer of a lucrative overseas contract as a forestry manager. He went on to give the details of what was involved and precisely where he would be working.

‘New Zealand?’ Roger repeated, understanding at once, from his son’s expression, that he had either already accepted the offer or that he intended to.

‘Yes,’ Christopher said. ‘Georgina and I are going to be married and then we’re …’ He was searching his father’s face. Trying to read him. Was he angry? Shocked? Or merely astonished? Whatever it was, the news had obviously taken him off guard. ‘Sorry, Pa. I realise this is a bit of a bolt from
the blue …’ Roger was shaking his head, incredulously. ‘But everything started to move rather fast and it seemed pointless to tell anyone until we – Georgina and I – knew the details and had thought things over.’ Roger, his face blank, drew heavily on his cigarette.

‘And when is all this going to happen?’ he asked. ‘The wedding. The emigration. And what about the Brewster girl’s parents? How do they feel about it?’

‘I believe they rather think it’s up to her, Pa. I mean … they don’t want to lose her but they’ve brought her up to know her own mind and make her own decisions. They’re delightful people. I’m sure you’ll like them. They’re very keen to meet you.’

Half an hour later Christopher was back at the lower farm where he sat down heavily at the kitchen table and thanked Alice for the cup of tea she put in front of him. She caught in his face a hint of the same tension that had dominated it when she had first encountered him, two years previously and only a few weeks before his breakdown. He looked as though he felt trapped in an impossible situation. But he caught her eye and smiled wryly.

‘Well … that went well!’ he said, carefully sipping the hot tea. He looked from Georgina to Alice. Then, setting down his cup, searched in his pockets for cigarettes and lighter. ‘D’you mind, Alice?’ She shook her head. He inhaled smoke and sat for a moment, staring ahead.

‘Well – are you going to tell us what happened, or
what?’ Georgina asked him, with, Alice thought, a hint of impatience in her voice.

‘Not much to tell,’ he said, blowing smoke and relaxing slightly. ‘You know Pa. I would say he reacted exactly as you would expect him to. Just sat there for a while. Staring me down. Like he used to when I was a kid and broke his rules or displeased him in some way. Not exactly angry. Just … disappointed!’ Georgina raised both her hands in a gesture of exasperation.

‘That wretched word again!’ she exclaimed.

‘Then he asked me if I understood exactly what would be involved if I was to turn my back on what he described as “all of this”. He meant the farms and the land of course. I told him I did understand and that it wasn’t a decision I had made lightly or on an impulse, that I’d thought long and hard about it and that you had too, Georgie, and we both felt it would be the right thing to do, in the circumstances. I thought he might ask what I thought the circumstances were.’

‘And he didn’t?’ Georgina queried.

‘No. He just sat there.’ Christopher ashed his cigarette.

‘And you didn’t tell him?’ Georgina was obviously irritated by Chris’s restraint. ‘You didn’t tell him how impossible he is? And how he makes you feel? And how hurtful it is and how insulting? And how you can’t and won’t put up with it anymore? Didn’t you tell him all that, Chris?’

Alice, observing the pair of them, was aware of how
difficult their relationship might become if Roger continued to feature in it.

‘I started to,’ Christopher told her. ‘I said I didn’t feel that he and I were temperamentally suited to working together. That he obviously considered that I always fell short of his expectations and that I was sick of being made to feel second-rate.’

‘Hey!’ Georgina said, mollified. ‘Well said, Christo! And what happened then?’

‘Then he did a thing he used to do when I was a kid and he considered that my behaviour was out of order.’

‘And what was that?’ Georgina asked.

‘He got up,’ Christopher said, ‘went to the window and stood with his back to me, staring out. And he said, very calmly, very coolly, “I think that’s enough of that, Christopher.” In those days I was expected to leave the room at that point and not speak to him again until I was ready to apologise for my unacceptable behaviour.’ Christopher smiled at Alice and Georgina, and at their astonished faces. He drew on his cigarette and was still smiling as he exhaled. ‘Well … perhaps it’s more civilised than having a blazing row. I don’t know.’

‘That’s it, then, is it?’ Georgina asked him. ‘No attempt to persuade you to stay?’

‘Do we want to stay?’ he asked her. There was a pause while their eyes met and held. Then she smiled. It was what Alice had come to think of as a real Georgina smile. Her chin was lifted, her eyes met Christopher’s, fixing him with
a straight, strong, positive gaze, her lips were parted and she was laughing.

‘Well,
I
don’t,’ she said. ‘I want to go! It’ll be such an adventure. Just think! Across Biscay, past Gibraltar, through the Med, down the Suez Canal. Aden, India, Ceylon, Perth, Sydney. Then across the Tasman to Wellington!’

‘And then it’ll be back to reality, Georgie. What happens if we don’t like it there?’ Christopher asked, watching her face.

‘We
will
like it! And anyway … if we don’t, we’ll come back! It’s not the end of the world!’

‘It’s as near as damn it!’ he said, laughing at her. ‘And I shall be committed for a minimum of two years, remember!’

‘I know! I know! And I can’t wait, Chris!’ She rounded the table, and standing behind him, lent over him and noisily kissed his cheek. Then she went to Alice, put her arms round her, hugged her tightly and kissed her, too. She was, Alice realised, totally, blissfully happy. Georgina felt Alice stiffen and released her. ‘What?’ she asked her. ‘What’s up, Alice?’

‘I was just thinking,’ Alice said, ‘about Roger.’ She looked at them and watched their smiles fade. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Didn’t mean to spoil things.’

Alice was uncertain whether to contact Roger and admit that she knew of Christopher’s plan. This, it seemed to her, would put her into the possibly difficult position of
confessing to having known of it for some time. Would Roger have expected her to pass the news on to him as soon as she received it? Would her failure to do so be perceived as an alliance with the son at the expense of the father? She had waited, hoping that some hostel business or other might result in a meeting between the two of them, but when several days had passed she telephoned the higher farm.

‘Mr Bayliss is gone to Winchester for a memorial service,’ Eileen told Alice. ‘He’ll be back Friday. He said to give you the phone number of his hotel if there was an emergency. There isn’t an emergency, is there, Mrs Todd?’ Alice told her that no, there was no emergency.

‘Don’t get involved, Alice,’ had been Georgina’s advice.

‘But what if he asks me how long I’ve known about all this? I mean, the two of you being engaged to marry, as well as the New Zealand thing? Do I lie?’ Georgina was apologetic.

‘We shouldn’t have involved you, Alice. I’m so sorry. I reckon Roger will guess you knew. But he’ll also know that whatever you did was in accordance with your good judgement and he trusts your judgement and he trusts you. More than that, I think he really, seriously loves you!’

‘Oh … why is he so difficult?’ Alice sighed, almost to herself. ‘It’s as though he is on one side of a six-foot wall and all the rest of us are on the other!’

Roger made no contact with Alice until late on the Sunday afternoon when he arrived, as usual, to drive Edward John to Ledburton to catch the bus back to his weekly boarding school. With the boy in the back seat there was no opportunity for Roger, or indeed Alice, to broach the subject of Christopher’s plans.

Gwennan and Annie were, at that moment, returning to the higher farm after driving the milking herd back to their pasture. They paused, breathless after the steep climb, to lean on a gate and look out, across Post Stone valley. The water meadows were already in shade and the shallow river meandered through stands of shadowy willow and alder to the point, almost vertically below the girls, where the lane, carried by a narrow, humpbacked bridge, crossed it, and having descended sharply from the west, began to climb, equally steeply, to the east. From their vantage point the two girls gazed down at the solid contours of the granite structure, watching idly for a flash of colour from the plumage of the pair of kingfishers often seen on that stretch of the river.

‘C’mon, Annie,’ Gwennan said, slapping at the skin on her bony forearm, ‘the midges is biting!’ At that moment the girls heard the sound of a car’s engine descending the opposite hill and invisible in the deep lane as it rapidly approached the bridge. Annie suggested that the car was probably their boss’s.

‘Mr Bayliss usually drives Edward John into Ledburton
about this time on Sunday evenings, to catch the Exeter bus,’ she murmured.

‘Where ’e gets the petrol from I dunno!’ Gwennan sighed, piously. But the car was not Roger Bayliss’s.

‘It’s Mrs Brewster!’ Gwennan murmured, shading her eyes against the low sunlight, as the car came suddenly into view.

‘And she’s going way too fast!’ Annie said, her fingers tightening on the top rung of the gate.

The angle of the lane’s approach to the bridge was a familiar hazard to those who used it. Jack, driving the truck in which he ferried the land girls to and fro between the farms, always slowed, almost to walking pace, before negotiating it, and Roger Bayliss took a pride in precisely positioning his Riley before making the tight left- and then right-hand turns necessary to cross it safely. But, as Gwennan and Annie watched, Margery Brewster barely slackened her speed as she hurtled down the last section of the descent, seeming to sense, too late, that a collision with the bridge was inevitable. Perhaps there was time, even then, to slam on the brakes but, to the horrified girls, Margery appeared not to and her car struck the solid granite with enormous force, buckling and slewing violently sideways against the parapet. The passenger door was wrenched off by the impact and Margery Brewster herself was flung out of her seat and slammed against the stonework on the far side of the bridge.

Instinctively both the girls began to run down the
steep lane towards the wreckage. Then Annie pulled at Gwennan’s arm.

‘No,’ she said. ‘One of us had best run to the farm and call for help! I’m faster than you, Taffy!’ She turned and began striding up the steep incline towards the cluster of grey slated roofs of the higher farm.

When Gwennan reached the bridge she was conscious of a stillness and an eerie silence in which one wheel of the stricken car continued to spin while the rest of the crumpled metal tilted precariously above the river. Margery Brewster’s handbag lay where it had been flung into the narrow roadway, while she herself sprawled, unmoving, against the parapet of the bridge. She lay on her side, blood pooling from under her head and spreading slowly across the gravelly surface of the lane.

‘Mrs Brewster?’ Gwennan said in a voice that was barely more than a whisper. After waiting for a response she went closer, knelt beside the injured woman and put her hand on an inert shoulder. Her touch was light but it was enough to redistribute Mrs Brewster’s weight, and she rolled, like a rag doll, onto her back. Her open eyes were blank and unfocused. A thread of liquid trickled from one corner of her mouth. As Gwennan leant over her, searching for some sign of life, she became aware of the strong, unmistakeable reek of alcohol. Released from Margery Brewster’s hand as she rolled over, a bottle of Gordon’s gin lay, unbroken and half empty, it’s screw top in place.

Gwennan had many failings but stupidity was not one
of them. It was obvious to her that the reason the village registrar had crashed her car was because, and not for the first time, she had been too drunk to drive it safely.

Initially a sense of superiority swept over Gwennan. Here was a woman who had been in authority over her. By whom she had, on one or two occasions, been reprimanded. Whose dominance she had frequently resented. But, as she looked at the spreadeagled body and the blood which was ceasing to flow from whatever appalling wound lay under the smashed skull, Gwennan thought suddenly of the registrar’s support when she had requested leave to visit her dying sister. And of the concern she had shown when, after Olwyn’s death, she had listened while Gwennan tried to explain why, having lost her faith, she would not go home to Wales for the funeral. Yes, she was posh and a bit bossy but she was, at heart, a good woman, and neither she nor her family deserved the spiteful gossip that would sweep the Ledburton area, provoking nods and winks for years on end if the cause of her death was revealed as too much of the gin in the bottle which lay, intact, beside her corpse. Gwennan could almost hear the tongues wagging. ‘Always one for a drop, was Mrs Brewster! Many’s the time I seen ’er tipsy! Standin’ on a chair singin’ “Nellie Dean” she were, at ’er Christmas party! Young Albertine had to help get ’er to bed after!’ Then she pictured the registrar’s husband, the benign Gordon Brewster. Nothing could spare him the grief he was about to suffer but she, Gwennan Pringle, had it in her power to protect him
from the scandal and the shame which would follow any suggestion that it was his wife’s weakness for the bottle that had caused the accident that had killed her.