Wartime Sweethearts (17 page)

Everyone was doing their best to look on the bright side, yet a ribbon of fear ran just beneath the surface, a tangible thing that affected Ruby just as much as everyone else.

‘Charlie!’ She flung her arms around her brother’s neck, hugging him to her as though she might never see him again.

Charlie laughed. ‘Come on, sis. I’m coming back. I promise.’

Slowly her arms left him and her father stepped forward.

‘Son …’

Never one to be demonstrative with his children, Stan Sweet shook his son’s hand. But suddenly, overcome by emotion, he threw his arms around his son’s broad shoulders just as Ruby had done.

It was a sight Ruby would never forget, yet it was so right for the moment, a moment gone forever.

Back at the bakery, Mary took a lingering look at the cheese straws she’d made that morning from some leftover dough and a piece of cheese rind she’d been loath to throw away.

She’d grated what remained of the cheese until she was in danger of slicing her knuckles, determined to use every last morsel until she was left with nothing more than the linen gauze that had held the cheese together. To augment the taste, she’d sprinkled in a little more salt than she would normally have done; basic ingredients indeed! Leftover dough and leftover cheese placed in the leftover heat from this morning’s bread bake.

The smell alone was heavenly and they’d browned well in the lingering warmth of the bread oven.

The idea had been to serve them at teatime on her father and sister’s return from seeing Charlie off, and Frances’s return from school. Teatime this evening would also be special because Frances was being evacuated the day after tomorrow, her father having saved enough petrol coupons to take his niece across the Severn on the ferry that ran from Aust to Bulwark.

There were twenty-four cheese straws, lovely and crisp and big enough to hold in a masculine fist without getting lost. The men who delivered the Anderson shelters came to mind.

Thinking of them she divided the cheese straws in half, reserving twelve for tea and twelve to sell in the shop. Most women in the village did their own baking, but there were a few widowers and even widows who didn’t bother to cook much for themselves and everyone liked a little treat now and again. There would only be enough to sell in their shop, and certainly not enough to supply the village stores and a few shops in Warmley, Hanham and Kingswood High Streets as they did with their bread deliveries. Charlie used to cycle to the closer ones and drive to those whose orders were enough to make it worthwhile to deliver by van.

Mary eyed the cheese straws proudly already planning to include free samples with next week’s bread deliveries.

‘But let’s see how they go in the shop first,’ she said out loud.

She was just setting them out on the counter when Mrs Darwin-Kemp came in, a woman who lived in a big house with her retired colonel husband and half a dozen servants.

Mary was surprised. Mrs Darwin-Kemp rarely did her own shopping. She’d always had staff to do it for her.

Even though the weather wasn’t even close to freezing, she was wearing a full-length fur coat and a black hat with a brim and stiff veil that covered the top half of her face. Her cheeks were rouged and her lips bright red. Her manner was furtive, glancing over her shoulder as though entering a shop was beneath her and best done in secret. She wasn’t that big a woman, but still her presence seemed to fill the shop to bursting point what with her coat, her hat and her attitude.

‘I’m having friends around for tea,’ she said imperiously without responding to Mary’s courteous welcome. ‘What have you got?’

Her manner was rude. If Ruby had been serving she would have retaliated with some stinging remark.

Mary smiled politely. ‘We have these. Fresh baked today.’

She waved her hand over the display of currant buns, individual apple and blackberry tarts her sister had made, and the freshly baked cheese straws.

‘The cheese straws are still warm. I’ve only just got them out of the oven,’ she explained. ‘They’re a new line we’re trying out.’

The woman’s nostrils flared and then contracted as her eyes scrutinised Mary’s suggestions. Mary guessed she’d smelled the savoury aroma and even fancied she’d heard Mrs Darwin-Kemp’s stomach rumbling.

‘How much are they?’

She asked the question sharply. Mary had the distinct impression she wanted to be out of here as soon as possible, that shopping for food was, in fact, beneath her.

Mary told her the price of the buns and tarts even though there was a price ticket standing rigid at the back of the display. With regard to the cheese straws she hadn’t had a chance to put a ticket on them but she instantly doubled the price she’d had in mind: payment for bad manners, she decided, was justified.

‘I’ll take all of the cheese straws and six of each of the others, plus two loaves of bread. Can you slice them?’

It was unusual to be asked to slice people’s loaves for them; after all, everybody knew how to use a bread knife, didn’t they?

‘Don’t you have a bread knife?’ Mary couldn’t help but ask, puzzled.

The woman’s thin face seemed to grow thinner, so much so that her curved nose seemed much larger. ‘Don’t be impertinent! It’s my cook’s day off.’

Mary relented. ‘I suppose I could slice them for you, though not right away. You’ll have to come back for them.’

‘I cannot possibly do that,’ said Mrs Darwin-Kemp with a wave of one gloved hand and a shake of her head. ‘My husband has people coming for tea from London and this is all terribly inconvenient. As I have already told you, I have to get everything ready myself, which is quite a chore I can tell you. Perhaps you can send it round with your boy?’

‘We don’t have a boy, though I can get my cousin to deliver it. She’ll be home from school by four o’clock. Will that be all right?’

A pair of hard eyes regarded her through the stiff black veil. The red lips were pursed so hard a sunburst of wrinkles radiated outwards. Mrs Darwin-Kemp heaved her shoulders inside the absurd fur coat. The imperious glare from behind the stiff veil remained. ‘Well, I suppose it will have to do. Our visitors are expected at five o’clock. Please make sure everything arrives on time. I’m having to set tea up with just my maid. My cook’s gone off and so has everyone else come to that; it is all very inconvenient. Now you won’t let me down, will you. This meeting is very important; in fact, it’s a matter of national importance. Oh,’ she said as an afterthought. ‘Don’t repeat that. It’s all very hush hush.’

Mary didn’t believe her. ‘On account?’

Mrs Darwin-Kemp shook her head. ‘No. I’ll pay for it now. I no longer have either the staff or the time to deal with such things. Servants joining the Women’s Land Army and driving buses and whatever! Leaving me to do my own cooking.’

Mary felt like cheering the servants who had dared to leave Mrs Darwin-Kemp’s employ. No doubt they were better paid and better treated even if they were working long hours.

She had heard rumours previously that Mrs Darwin-Kemp had trouble keeping servants. It must be even more difficult now, she concluded, that better wages were being offered for doing war work than domestic work.

Mrs Darwin-Kemp paused at the shop door before opening it, looking up and down the High Street before venturing out. Satisfied there was nobody she knew around, she pulled up the thick collar of her coat and tugged the stiff net of her hat down over her face. Suitably disguised, she stuck her nose out, again looking this way and that before finally dashing to her car which – horror of horrors – she was having to drive herself.

Frances was not best pleased about having to borrow Charlie’s old bicycle and cycle over to the big house with Mrs Darwin-Kemp’s order. For a start the bicycle was too big for her and even though Charlie had adjusted the saddle height before leaving, her toes only just about reached the pedals.

The big house where the Darwin-Kemps lived was called Swainswick, but nobody local called it that. It remained the ‘big house’, uttered in unflattering tones by the villagers as though it were another country, which to some extent to them it was. To them it was the place where ‘the gentry’ lived, people with lots of money who spoke with cut-glass accents. Besides having live-in servants, they employed people from the village but rarely mixed with them except to open the village fete or act as a judge in the annual horticultural show. Even then they relied on their head gardener, Archie Singer, for an opinion.

Tradesmen were directed by a sign at the main gate that they should make their way to the single gate at the rear of the property. Frances followed the instructions and eventually found herself faced with a smaller notice instructing her to press the bell and wait for admittance.

Frances stabbed at the white ivory bell which was embedded in a brass surround. She waited while standing on one leg, the bicycle leaning against one hip.

Nobody came.

Frances huffed and puffed impatiently and seeing as she hadn’t as yet eaten the alluring high tea Mary had promised her, she was impatient to get going. She pressed again. In an effort to hear better, she cocked her head. No sound of footsteps. No response whatsoever.

Really impatient to get back to her tea and the cosy front room fire, she pressed for a third time, keeping her finger on the buzzer while she counted ten – very slowly!

Ten was always a good number and things usually happened if you really wanted them, simply by counting to ten. It was like the magic words from ‘Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves’. Ali Baba had uttered ‘Open Sesame’, and hey presto, the door to rich treasures sprang open.

It had to be easy to open a garden gate if magic words could open the entrance to a treasure trove, or at least have somebody arrive that would open it.

She was just about to press for a fourth and final time, when an elderly barrel-chested man with rigid shoulders and an oiled hairstyle with a centre parting came ambling into view on bandy legs, his arms swinging at his sides.

‘It’s open,’ he shouted at her.

So why didn’t it open when I shoved it, thought Frances?

‘Oh. I read the sign and thought it wasn’t.’

Although she hadn’t exactly met him socially, Frances knew she was face to face with Colonel Darwin-Kemp.

He was smartly dressed and looked very glad to see her. ‘You’ve certainly helped us out of a fix, Rosie. Got the sliced bread with you?’

Frances said that, yes, she did have the sliced bread with her. ‘But my name’s not Rosie.’

The colonel had turned his back and didn’t appear to have heard her. She presumed he was deaf. A lot of older people were deaf though sometimes it was only pretending because they just didn’t want to hear what she was talking about. Too busy. Always too busy.

The kitchen was big and modern without a single crumb in sight. A pat of butter plus a plate of sliced cucumber was laid out on a large pine table, plus three serving platters with patterned edges.

‘I expect you’re tremendously capable of making cucumber sandwiches,’ he said to her. ‘I believe the bread you’ve brought us is already sliced. The memsahib, my wife, insisted that the baker should do so. I told my wife I didn’t think the bakery usually sliced bread on demand, but she nearly bit my head off when I said that. It’s been hard for her, you see, Rosie, what with servants charging off to war without a by your leave and us having to cook and clean and whatever for ourselves. You know, she’s even serving the tea and everything herself this afternoon because our maid Lily, who we were counting on, has gone off to the station to say goodbye to her young man. I believe he’s joined the Wiltshire Yeomanry. The memsahib’s never done it before in her life. Brought up in India, you see. House full of servants. Not had to lift a finger, but there you are, every man – and woman – to the pumps, eh what?’

His gaze drifted around the kitchen giving her the impression that he’d forgotten she was there. He had a funny way about him and a funny way of speaking that was quite intriguing so she didn’t get round to repeating that her name was not Rosie, and that she knew everything that went on at the bakery because she lived there.

‘You can make cucumber sandwiches?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Of course I can,’ Frances replied hotly. ‘Anybody can make sandwiches. I mean, if they’re used to it,’ she added, unwilling to upset the memsahib, as the colonel had called Mrs Darwin-Kemp.

The colonel beamed at her. ‘I should have known. You look very capable, Rosie, very capable indeed.’

‘I’d better get on with it.’

Frances placed the bread on the table. Mary had placed the loaves in brown paper bags and tied the ends together with string to stop the slices falling out.

‘Good start,’ declared the colonel. ‘Topping good start.’ He leaned closer as though about to confide a very big secret. ‘To tell you the truth, the memsahib nearly had a fit when I told her we were expecting very important guests. They have very particular tastes, so I hope the bread is very thinly sliced.’

Again Frances considered correcting the colonel’s mistake about her name seeing as he continued to call her Rosie even when she’d informed him it was Frances. He just hadn’t heard her.

So who was Rosie? The only Rosie she knew was Rose Syms, who was known to take casual jobs as cook or waitress, though only on a very basic level. Goodness knows where she’d got to, but things and people were very unpredictable at the moment.

She was about to own up and tell him her name again when the colonel informed her that she might very well be here washing up until seven o’clock, and he hoped her family wouldn’t be worried. That was when it occurred to her that they
deserved
to be worried. They were sending her away, everything arranged without even bothering to ask her. This, she decided, was an opportunity to get back at them, though she felt a momentary pang for the tea she was missing.

Even though she was attracted to the Forest of Dean by Uncle Stan’s forest folklore and having been reassured she would still receive school dinners, she couldn’t help harbouring a deep resentment that everything had been arranged without asking her first. Uncle Stan had not considered how much she would miss everyone, so she would show them beyond doubt how much they would miss her. She wouldn’t go home until late! Very late!