Alice's Girls (17 page)

‘Flowers?’ he asked, doubtfully. ‘I have to hold flowers?’

‘Only a very small bunch,’ Georgina reassured him, ‘and only for a minute or so.’

‘I don’t have to wear a lace collar or anything, do I?’

‘Goodness no! Your school uniform will be fine. Would a white carnation in your buttonhole be acceptable, d’you think?’

On the south side of the Websters’ home, which was rather more than a farmhouse and slightly less than a manor house, someone had once constructed an orangery which, as the years turned, had become a conservatory. Four wide, glazed doors connected it to the dining room, and while it was hoped that fine weather would allow the reception to take place on the terrace outside the old orangery, its fragile glazing would, in the event of rain, provide shelter and easy access to the house. Isabel and John stood in the humid warmth of its quiet interior, diffused light filtering through overgrown palms and creepers. One or two ancient wicker chairs leant drunkenly, as though about to topple over and tip their flat and faded linen cushions onto the tiled floor.

‘Bit of a clear out?’ John suggested. ‘Couple of hours with the pruning shears? Get rid of those chairs and hose the spiders out …?’

‘I suppose it is a very romantic place for a quiet wedding,’ Isabel sighed, having imagined something grander for her only daughter.

‘Well, it’s what she wants,’ her father said.

It had always been the Websters’ intention to raise their children to value independence above all, but there were those who felt that this strategy had backfired on them when Georgina’s emigration plans had first been made public. Isabel had winced when people pointed out to her how far away New Zealand was. ‘Christopher’s contract is only for two years,’ she told them, as brightly as she
could. ‘Then they’ll be home on leave, and quite possibly for good!’ But people shook their heads, sighed and gave anecdotal accounts of other young couples who had sailed off to the Antipodes and never returned.

‘Fancy Georgie on’y askin’ Annie to ’er weddin’,’ Mabel said with her mouth full. A group of the girls were eating their sandwiches in the cart shed one rainy midday. Mabel, who missed the camaraderie of the hostel, often joined the girls at lunchtime, sometimes alone, occasionally with one or the other of her twins on her knee.

‘Well, she couldn’t of asked all of us! There’d be too many,’ Gwennan said. ‘And they was always special friends, Annie and Georgie was.’ Gwennan, since her ‘miracle’, had, Alice noticed, become considerably quieter and less irritable. Whether she was biting her habitually spiteful tongue or whether her three years among people who were consistently less aggressive and critical than she had finally exerted a benign influence on her previously unpleasant character, Alice did not know. But the change in her was undeniable. When the girls suggested making a collection for a wedding present for Georgina, it was Gwennan who pointed out that as the couple were about to sail for New Zealand the last thing they needed was more in the way of luggage, and it was she who solved the problem, arranging for a photographer from Exeter to take a picture of all the girls, the farmhands, including Rose, Mabel and Ferdie, plus the children Scarlet O’Hara, Winston and Arthur Vallance, and with Alice herself and
Edward John at the centre of the group. The photographer posed them charmingly, some perched on the farmhouse gate, a few on the low wall, others ranged in front of it, the old building, with its undulating thatch protectively held between the two solid chimneys, forming a familiar background. The photograph was enlarged and elegantly mounted onto a presentation card on which all the girls inscribed their names, together with goodwill messages to the newly-weds. Everyone was pleased with Gwennan for thinking of something so practical and appropriate, and when Alice voiced their collective appreciation, Gwennan, out of habit, attempted to conceal the pleasure she felt in their obvious approval.

The wedding was to take place in the early afternoon. Hector had contrived to be in the area on official War Artists business and arrived, looking impressive in a suit. Annie was amazed by his elegance and even more delighted with him than usual.

‘It was Pottie,’ he told her, laughing at her surprise, when she went to the gate to greet him and stood gazing and smiling as he extracted himself from the confines of his bull-nosed Morris. ‘She absolutely forbade me to go to a wedding as I was!’

‘And how were you?’ Annie giggled.

‘Pretty much as usual, I suppose! Anyhow …’ he shot his cuffs, ‘what d’you think?’ His hair, which usually flopped over his forehead, was Brylcreemed and sleek. ‘The shoes are my own but the suit belongs to my brother
Hugh and the tie is Father’s!’ She told him he looked wonderful.

His eyes moved over her. He wasn’t sure what it was that made Annie so beautiful. It didn’t occur to him to analyse her appeal. Was it the lustrous dark hair? The heavily lashed eyes? The perfect proportions of her face? The generous, smiling mouth? The full-skirted,
tight-waisted
, pale-linen frock? He didn’t know. The sun glinted on the thick lenses of his spectacles and Annie could feel his smile bathing her in an irresistible warmth.

‘And so do you!’ he said. ‘Look wonderful, I mean. You look absolutely stunningly …’ There were no words for what he felt. So he simply wrapped his arms tightly round her and they stood, conscious only of each other and unaware of the smiling faces watching through the small panes of the farmhouse windows.

The church in the village closest to the Webster farm, and hardly larger than a chapel, was festooned with hedgerow flowers, predominantly by towering foxgloves whose vivid purple was accentuated by the shocking pink of campions and punctuated by studs of brilliant yellow buttercups, all in a haze of Queen Anne’s lace and meadowsweet.

Christopher, Edward John and Lionel, in his role as best man, turned to watch Georgina as she moved down the aisle towards them. The heavy, ivory silk of her
pencil-slim
, full-length skirt and long-sleeved, fitted jacket, which accentuated her narrow waist, had been recovered from the wedding dress which her mother had worn twenty-two
years previously. The brim of her pale, wide-brimmed hat was pinned back with a single silk rose.

Alice, watching from the front pew of the groom’s side of the aisle, with Roger Bayliss beside her, caught the expressions on the faces of the group watching Georgina’s approach to the alter. The benign vicar was the most composed. Edward John was staring with undisguised amazement at this bride, the first he had encountered and the most beautiful, he was certain, in the entire world. Colour rushed into his cheeks when, precisely on cue, he stepped forward to take Georgina’s small bouquet from her. Lionel, too, seemed lost in contemplation of the sight of his sister, almost as though she was a beautiful stranger, to whom he was, to his astonishment, related, while Christopher stood transfixed, his eyes on Georgina and his face illuminated by the soft light falling on him through a stained glass representation of the Archangel Gabriel. Then, spontaneously, he stepped forward and kissed her. A ripple of laughter went through the congregation and the vicar wagged a finger in mock disapproval.

‘Not yet, young man,’ he said quietly. ‘Not quite yet, if you please!’

Although the upshot of Roger’s revelation to Alice concerning his traumatic experience in the First World War trenches had convinced her that this was what lay at the root of his failed relationship with Christopher, he had refused to be persuaded to broach the subject with his
son. Despite the fact that he had not sworn her to secrecy, either to Christopher himself or to Georgina, Alice knew that he was assuming her discretion and that to breach his confidence could have only negative results for all of them.

With the number of land girls at Lower Post Stone now reduced, it was possible for Alice to invite her friend Ruth to visit her at the farmhouse, where several of the small, spartan bedrooms were now unoccupied. Ruth, used to the sophistication of her London apartment, smiled patronisingly and bent her head under the low, oak lintel of the door. A cheap dressing table stood between the narrow twin beds and there was a small wardrobe which listed slightly on the uneven floorboards. Ruth stooped and peered out through the tiny window at the view over the farmyard towards the barns and then glanced nervously round the limited space which was to house her for the next two nights.

‘No mice, I hope, Allie? Or creepy-crawlies?’ she enquired.

‘No. But don’t expect to be able to use the bathroom in the morning until the girls have left for work!’

‘Oh …’ Ruth looked slightly put out. ‘And what time will that be?’

‘About six-thirty,’ Alice told her.

‘Good grief! I won’t even be conscious at six-thirty!’

‘I think you will be,’ Alice sighed, ‘with my lot thundering about the place!’
It was after supper on Ruth’s first evening at Lower Post Stone that the conversation between the two women, as they strolled along a footpath which ran through the water meadow, centred on Alice’s concern regarding Roger’s history and the effect its secrecy was having on the
newly-weds
.

‘I honestly don’t think Christopher would have chosen to emigrate if his father hadn’t made him feel such a failure.’

‘Well, you can’t be sure of that, Allie. And one has to recognise the appeal of emigration to those two young things. Just imagine – sailing off together into the sunset! What a honeymoon! Crossing the world! “Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores”! Those P&O boats are the most tremendous fun!’ Ruth paused, catching in Alice’s face a concern which, she guessed, was related more to Roger Bayliss’s loss of his son and heir than to the adventures of the newly married couple. ‘But I do see what you mean, Allie. It’s a miserable business.’ They walked on in silence for a while, the long grasses flicking past their legs, the midges drifting above their heads. ‘So … when you tried to persuade Roger to tell Christopher about what happened in … when was it?’

‘Nineteen sixteen,’ Alice murmured. ‘He wouldn’t commit himself to telling Chris about it and he obviously hasn’t.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because Georgina would have told me!’

‘Yes … unless …’

‘Unless the son is as secretive as the father, d’you mean? Oh! Heaven forfend, Ruth! No. I’m sure he hasn’t spoken to Chris about it, and I have a horrible feeling he won’t.’

‘So he didn’t promise to?’

‘No. He didn’t promise to.’ There was another pause in their conversation in which, because the light was fading, Alice suggested that they began making their way back towards the farmhouse. Bats were flickering through the dusk and a three-quarter moon was becoming brighter by the minute as the sky darkened.

‘The man must be insane!’ Ruth sighed. She had listened carefully when Alice had given her an outline of the facts of Roger Bayliss’s First World War disaster, and had then asked a succession of pertinent questions. They walked for a while in silence, then she said, ‘He’s not only ruining his relationship with the boy, but with you, Allie! You are fond of him, aren’t you? Come on, admit it.’

‘Yes. I am fond,’ Alice said, miserably, twisting a stem of meadowsweet in her fingers.

‘Are you lovers?’ Ruth enquired almost casually and without turning her head in Alice’s direction.

‘We have been lovers,’ Alice said. ‘Once.’

‘Only once? Wasn’t it …?’

‘Yes it was. Very,’ Alice said.

‘Then why only once, for God’s sake?’

‘Because the whole thing has become so complicated! I couldn’t tell Christopher about his father. I couldn’t tell
Georgina. And then, at the wedding, there I was, Ruth, sitting beside Roger in the pew watching Georgie and Chris make their vows, and at the reception, smiling and sipping hock. I have never felt so useless! I had begged Roger, practically on my knees, not to let Chris leave for New Zealand without telling him. What more could I do?’ They walked in silence for a while and then Ruth brought up the subject of Alice’s prospects as a consultant for Woodrow Bradshaws and Associates.

When Alice Todd had first arrived at the farmhouse the kitchen had been a shambles. With often as many as ten hungry mouths to feed, it was largely in the interests of
self-preservation
that she had persuaded Roger Bayliss to allow her to make alterations to it. She studied her requirements, drew up scaled plans, and with her employer’s permission and on a tight budget, transformed the space and facilities available to her. The effect on her workload was huge and she soon regained the energy that had been draining from her. Rose became better tempered, the girls’ evening meal was always on time, and Alice was even able to improve on a menu constrained by food rationing. It was when word got around the neighbourhood and Alice’s design skills had been sought and implemented in the kitchens of several other hostels and small establishments in the area, that it occurred to her that her future, which since the collapse of her marriage had seemed, to say the least, precarious, might be less so than she had feared. An introduction to a London architectural conglomerate resulted in the
distinct possibility of a career with them as a culinary design consultant, an idea which pleased and increasingly interested her.

‘It’s time to make the decision, Allie. Charles Maitland won’t wait for ever for you to make up your mind. We were discussing it the other day and he needs you in London for at least a week, in which he will introduce you to his colleagues and the Woodrow Bradshaws clients and sort out the details of your contract. With the hostel running at half strength it should be possible for you to take some time off, shouldn’t it? You’ll stay with me, of course, and most importantly you’ll be away from here and more able to get things into perspective with this wretched Roger!’

‘He’s not wretched!’ Alice protested. ‘Well, I suppose he is a bit … But then so am I!’

Ruth returned to London but continued to mastermind what she saw as Alice’s deliverance from the depths of Devonshire and the gloom of her relationship with Roger Bayliss. Her voice, slightly strident, on the telephone a few days later informed Alice that everything was arranged. She had simply to get herself to London on the following Monday and be prepared for a stay of approximately ten days. Rose arranged for Albertine Yeo to deputise for her at the tea room and it was suggested that Edward John could remain at his boarding school for the one weekend his mother would be in London.