Evie (22 page)

‘What in the name of flamin’ heck did you have to go and say that for, you brainless bugger!’

‘All I said was “them that—”’

‘“Asks no questions gets told no lies.” Yeah, I heard what you said, alright! You’m a nit-brain, Ferdie Vallance! A nit-brain! Edward John may on’y be a kid but ’e’s a smart one! When that lad puts two and two together, ’e makes four! Sure as eggs is eggs, ’e’ll reckon some’at’s gone on and it’ll not take long for ’im to work out what!’ Ferdie sulkily considered this.

‘P’raps us should tell ’im,’ he suggested.

‘Tell ’im? Tell Edward John? Not likely! Least people know ’bout this the better!’

‘Lots know already, though. What with my Mabel and your Hester and your Mum!’

‘But all of them knows better than to let it go no further!’ Dave insisted. ‘Edward John would tell his ma, most likely, and she’d tell the boss and the boss be a magistrate now! We’d have the law down on us in no time!’

Dave sat down heavily on the low wall, rested his forearms on his knees, his big hands hanging loosely between them.

‘That’s where us got it wrong, though, Ferdie. Us should of called the law instead of chuckin’ ’im in the slurry. We ’adn’t done nothing wrong ’til then. What happened with the ladder were an accident, pure and simple. There was plenty of witnesses to the GBH what Clark ’ad done to Evie. Then the Eyetie. Then you. And Mrs Bayliss. Then the pair of us. ’E’d ’ve gone down for all that, for sure, and we’d of bin in the clear!’ He looked up at the damaged wall and then at the buckled metal of the ladder. Ferdie was doubtfully shaking his head.

‘You reckon the law would ’ave believed us? They got a nasty way of twistin’ things, that lot, Dave. Imagine what the newspapers would say!’ Dave acknowledged the truth of this with a sigh.

‘Yeah …’ he said. ‘You can just see the ’eadlines, can’t you. “Locals murder returned soldier over two-timin’ land girl”.’

‘But it weren’t murder,’ Ferdie said. ‘It were an accident.’

‘Try provin’ that, when the bastard’s body be under six foot of sludge and weighted down be ’alf an ’arrow.’

They were right about Edward John. He had put two and two together and although he had not made four, he was closer to it than he was to three, or even five.

His first theory was that Norman Clark had found his way down from the Lucas farm to Lower Post Stone where he still hoped to find Evie. Instead he had been discovered by Dave and Ferdie who set on him in an attempt to run him off the property. The ensuing fight, which had resulted in the bruises and cuts which both Dave and Ferdie later claimed to have been caused by the storm, could have been both violent and protracted, ending in Clark making his escape, as he had after the earlier incident, across the fields. This hypothesis raised the question of how, given that the local constabulary had been, by then, alerted to Clark’s presence in the area and were actively searching for him, no one had seen any sign of him. And, more inexplicably, why, if Clark had arrived at the lower farm, neither Dave, Ferdie or even Hester, had not immediately contacted the police? Edward John at that point knew nothing of the disconnected telephone or how Dave had subsequently replaced the damaged wiring.

As each of his theories raised more questions than it answered Edward John allowed himself to be distracted by the complex question of his own future. He would be leaving his prep school at the end of the next summer term. In line with tradition and in common with all the boys in his year, he had recently spent half an hour with his headmaster, discussing his ambitions.

Geoffrey Turbot, known affectionately if not respectfully as ‘Fishy’, offered Edward John a ginger biscuit from the tin on his desk and then continued his scrutiny of his pupil’s end-of-term report. It was obvious to Edward John that the biscuit was intended to put him at his ease, but as he already
knew his report was a good one and consequently was not at all ill at ease, he simply sat enjoying the biscuit and watching Fishy’s spectacles slide down his long, bony nose.

‘Well, young man?’ Turbot asked, removing the spectacles, closing the report and clasping his hands on the inky blotter in front of him. ‘What’s it to be? Agriculture or medicine?’ Geoffrey Turbot was familiar with Edward John’s history, his parents’ broken marriage, his charming and resourceful mother and his warm relationship with his recently acquired stepfather.

‘Farming, probably,’ Edward John told him and then, reacting to his headmaster’s slightly quizzical expression, added, ‘There’s a lot to it, you know, and my stepfather is very good at it. I like the Post Stone valley. And the people. And the animals. So I’ll probably try for Seale Hayne and then …’ Edward John was picking up the distinct impression that Fishy was not entirely happy with his answer. The headmaster helped himself to a biscuit and pushed the tin towards Edward John.

‘You used the word “probably” twice, young man.’

‘Did I?’ Edward John said.

The discussion that followed was not an unfamiliar one to the headmaster. Boys leaving prep school were almost always in a vulnerable state when it came to making decisions about their ambitions. Some evaded the issue altogether, leaving it, in the short term at any rate, to their teachers to suggest the subjects best suited to equip them for modest success in a respectable profession, or for the long term, to parental ambition which often resulted in disappointment.
In Turbot’s experience, only a very few boys at twelve years plus a few months felt confident enough to resist outside pressures from whichever direction they came. Often this led to false starts or, more sadly, to whole lives being blighted by wistful reflection. ‘What I always wanted to do.’ ‘Who I always wanted to be’ …

The headmaster watched his pupil eat the second biscuit. On the boy’s face was a slight frown, his eyes were fixed on some distant prospect. Or perhaps on nothing at all. He swallowed the last of the biscuit, and after a moment, almost apologetically engaged the headmaster’s eyes.

‘Sorry, sir,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking …’

‘You go ahead,’ Turbot said, groping amongst the clutter on his desk for pipe, tobacco pouch and matches. ‘Have a good think. No hurry. No hurry at all.’ He thumbed golden shreds of Barney’s Full Strength down into the bowl of his pipe, drew the match flame into it and had been pulling and puffing gently for some time before Edward John spoke.

‘I had thought,’ he said, ‘at one time, that I might like to be a vet, but …’

‘But what?’ Turbot said, through teeth clamped round the stem of his pipe.

‘But … it takes such ages to qualify. It’s a massive subject. All the different species, you see. Not like being an ordinary doctor and only having to study humans.’

‘And that seemed a bit daunting, did it?’ Turbot asked.

‘A bit. And then I thought about being a brain surgeon or something. A haematologist, perhaps. They study—’

‘The blood. Yes. That sounds quite challenging. Your
results for science, biology and physics indicate that you have capabilities in that direction. You’d need to keep up your Latin, of course, and your maths but—’

‘But then I rather went off medicine,’ Edward John said, apologetically, adding, ‘Because I really would hate to have to live in a city, you see, and brain surgeons and haematologists more or less have to because it’s where the big hospitals are and where the groundbreaking research goes on.’

‘Mmm,’ Turbot said. ‘Groundbreaking research, eh. Well, yes, I suppose it does. It’s a dilemma, isn’t it.’

‘Yes, it is a bit.’ Edward John watched Turbot knock the ashes from the bowl of his pipe.

‘The thing is, old chap,’ the headmaster said, ‘that you really don’t have to make any big decisions at this stage of things.’

‘Don’t I?’ Edward John asked. ‘I sort of thought I did. Don’t I have to tell my housemaster at Wellington which subjects I’m going to study for School Cert. and Matric. and everything?’

‘True. You do. But the clever thing is to cover all your bases. Concentrate on subjects that not only interest you but have a link to any of the careers you are considering and just give the others a bit of a nod from time to time, to keep everyone happy. See what I mean?’ Edward John clearly did see and said so. ‘Now scram,’ Turbot said. ‘Poor old Harrison Minor has been kicking his heels outside my door for far too long. Tell him to come in, will you?’

‘Yes, sir. And thank you very much, sir.’

Harrison Minor was propping up a wall in the corridor.
‘In you go, Harri Mi,’ Edward John called to him, feeling oddly relieved and rather pleased with himself. But as he walked down the long corridor that would take him back to his classroom, his mind busy with his headmaster’s words, he found himself faced with the inevitable scene in which he would have to tell Roger Bayliss that however much he loved the Post Stone valley, together with the processes of farming it and the beasts and the people involved, he did not want to make it the hub of his life. Although he knew that Roger was proud of his scholastic achievements, he also knew that he hoped, in view of the unlikelihood of his own son taking over the farms, that Alice’s son would do so.

The Christmas festivities were to begin on December the twenty-third with Rose’s tea party, celebrating the departure, on the following day, of the last two of the Post Stone land girls.

Winnie and Gwennan had contrived to avoid much that could be described as manual work during their final weeks on the farms, and as a result, Roger Bayliss resented having to pay their virtually unearned wages plus their board and lodging at the pub.

‘Think of it as a Christmas bonus, darling,’ Alice coaxed him. ‘A thank you for their hard work over all these years.’ When Roger responded with a sound which closely resembled a ‘bah humbug’, she accused him of behaving like Scrooge. Roger, without lowering his copy of
The Times
, told her that he had always sympathised strongly with Ebenezer Scrooge.

‘One of my literary heroes,’ he said. ‘The poor fellow, left
to his own devices, would obviously have much preferred to spend Christmas in his own company rather than with that ghastly family of his, ghosts or no ghosts. Rather feeble of him to let himself get talked into it, I’ve always thought!’ Alice laughed at him.

‘Just try to keep your miserable feelings to yourself this afternoon, there’s a dear – and don’t forget to compliment Eileen on her trifle.’

Eileen had not had a lot to do with the land girls, who had been housed in the lower farmhouse, but had earned herself an invitation to the party by producing a huge bowl foaming with whipped cream and garnished with preserved summer fruits, all of this topping a layer of buttery sponge, drowning in custard and half a bottle of Roger Bayliss’s best sherry.

Winnie and Gwennan were quite overcome by the number of people who had gathered in Rose’s tea room. The Crocker family were joined by Hester’s brother Zeke and Polly, his bride. Ferdie and Mabel Vallance had brought their twins, Scarlet O’Hara and Winston, nimble two-year-olds, who mislaid themselves under the tables and amongst the chair legs, while Thurza Crocker, already exhibiting a strong sense of independence, waved her arms, flexed her cherubic legs and demanded to be allowed to join them.

‘Just look at you all!’ Gwennan exclaimed, confronted by the noisy roomful.

‘I’ll most likely cry before I’m done!’ Winnie warned them as a cheer went up when she and Gwennan made their entrance.

Winnie was wearing one of the outfits she had assembled for her new role as landlady of the refurbished public house ‘with accommodation for travelling gentlemen’ of which she and her Uncle Ted were now co-licensees. Her ruby-red velvet frock showed off a figure which was just beginning to show the first signs of maturity. Her hair was tightly and permanently waved, its colour a harder, darker chestnut than usual, while her make-up suggested that it would survive long evenings spent supervising her saloon bar, her public bar and her snug.

Gwennan too had completed her transformation from sober land girl to sober manageress of a funeral parlour and had purchased her charcoal-grey, worsted suit from a superior ladies’ outfitter in Exeter. The narrow skirt and fitted, shoulder-padded jacket made her slightly gawky figure appear almost elegant and very similar to the model in the copy of
Vogue
which she had borrowed from Alice Bayliss. The neat white blouse, with its modest, lace-trimmed collar, softened the bleak bones of her face, while her unremarkable hair remained unremarkable.

‘Very businesslike, Gwennan,’ Alice told her, knowing that this was precisely the effect intended. She was rewarded by one of Gwennan’s rare smiles.

A picture postcard had arrived that morning at the higher farm, bearing an Italian stamp and a message to ‘dear all’. It showed a panoramic view of the Bay of Naples with the ubiquitous Mount Vesuvius prominently featured. The message confirmed that the lovers were safely reunited, that the ship would sail that evening, that they both sent their love
to everyone and would write soon. The card was circulated from hand to sticky hand and only narrowly missed a serious chewing when Hester eased it from between her daughter’s newly acquired milk teeth.

When the trifle bowl had been scraped clean and everyone had worked their way through the less spectacular contributions of food, the children had spilt the lemonade, the men had downed the beer, the ladies the gin and oranges and were now sipping tea, Roger Bayliss tapped his glass with his trifle spoon and made a slightly formal speech in which the valuable contribution that Winnie and Gwennan had made to the war effort was mentioned. He then adopted a heavily Teutonic accent in order to tell a joke about German soldiers in North Africa, which posed the question ‘why in the desert do you not hungry go?’ the answer having something to do with it being ‘because of the sand which in the desert is!’ No one quite understood it but everyone laughed and applauded because they felt happy and the boss was ‘a good ol’ boy’ of whom they all approved.

‘’Nother cup of tea, Mr Bayliss, sir?’ Rose asked, appearing suddenly beside him. When he politely declined Rose gave him one of what Alice had always described as ‘her Rose looks’. This ‘look’ was a blend of concern, sympathy and curiosity. Alice had learnt to treat these looks warily because the next stage was very often a question that fell into the category of prying, or, to put it even less kindly, though more honestly, of downright nosiness. ‘I bet you’re missing your Christopher, aren’t you,’ she told him, nodding in agreement with herself and continuing before he could respond, with,
‘It’s times like these when you feel it most, I daresay.’ Roger shook his head vaguely and looked for Alice, hoping he could signal to her for immediate help. But Alice was deep in conversation with Polly and Zeke. ‘That New Zealand place is such a long way off,’ Rose continued, shaking her head as though it was at least as far off as the moon, and then delivering her knockout blow. ‘I don’t suppose they’ll ever come back, do you? People never do. And there you were, Mr Bayliss, planning for him to take over the farms from you one day! What’s that saying – something to do with mice? I can never remember it proper. Scottish it is … But you know what I mean, I’m sure. Such a shame. You certain you don’t want more tea?’ Roger again refused the proffered pot and Rose retreated, tut-tutting as she went.