Wartime Sweethearts (41 page)

Frances gasped. ‘Our orchard?’

Elspeth nodded solemnly. ‘For the war effort.’

Frances couldn’t begin to guess what part an old neglected orchard might have in the war against the Germans, but she didn’t want it dug up like the one up at Perrotts’ Farm.

Like a flock of homing pigeons, they ran as one, determined to get to their destination, though no plan was in place of what they would do once they got there. They’d played in that orchard from the time they were big enough to climb over the gate or the ruined wall, so when they were finally there, seeing what was going on, all eyes were filled with dismay.

‘They’re burning them,’ young Edgar exclaimed with disbelief.

Frances took a deep breath and tasted apples, fallout from the bonfire. The orchard was ruined. Trunks were being loaded on to a lorry; bigger branches were being sawn into manageable logs before being distributed to those villagers already gathered. As the word spread about free firewood, more joined them and arguments were breaking out.

A bonfire of twigs, roots and dried leaves crackled and spat in the heart of the orchard.

Even the long grass where voles and rabbits and other small creatures lived was being cut down and there were gaping holes where the trees had been ripped from the ground.

Frances stared. ‘They can’t do this!’

‘Oh yes they can.’ Miriam Powell was pushing an old perambulator piled high with logs. ‘They have to, Frances. It’s an order from the very top. We need more land to plant vegetables and wheat. We have to be able to feed ourselves and anyway, we’ve got enough apple trees, certainly around here. Never mind though, eh. You’ll find somewhere else to play with your friends.’

Her smile was sickly sweet, almost as sickly sweet as the smell of burning apple twigs coming from the heart of the orchard.

Frances was just about to say there was nowhere quite like the orchard when she caught sight of Gareth Stead standing in the middle of the pub yard watching the proceedings with an odd look on his face.

At first she thought he was looking at her, but it wasn’t so. He was looking beyond her to where two men were pondering the contents of a sack.

‘Governor,’ one of them shouted. ‘We’ve found a bag of bones.’

A big man with powerful arms and a black moustache strode over to them.

‘Just bones?’ He sounded as though he wasn’t too pleased at being disturbed.

‘And a dress,’ one of the men said. ‘There’s a dress in here as well.’

The man speaking pulled out what looked at a distance like a bundle of material. Frances looked to where Gareth Stead had been watching. He wasn’t there.

Scared, she decided. Gareth is scared and she thought she knew why.

‘Mister,’ she said, running over to the man the others had addressed as Governor. ‘Mister. I know who buried those bones.’

‘You do?’ The man looked at her kindly. ‘And how’s that then, me ’andsome?’

‘I saw him bury them. It was him,’ she said, pointing towards the Apple Tree pub. ‘It was him. I saw him, but he didn’t see me.’

The man’s expression turned in a flash from friendly to serious. He touched the dress and peered into the sack. ‘It’s bones all right. Could be bones of anything, though.’

‘Only women wear dresses, Governor,’ the man who had brought the sack over pointed out.

The man with the black moustache conceded that the other man was right and shook his head. ‘I don’t like this. I don’t like this at all.’

Frances saw her chance to get her own back on a man she disliked intensely. It was probably his fault that her orchard was being ripped up, though everyone said it was because of the war.

‘I expect it’s his wife,’ she piped up to the man with the black moustache. ‘Nobody’s seen her for years.’

Stan Sweet and Sam Pickard were mighty pleased to hear that the person responsible for stealing one of their pigs had been caught. Everything to do with pigs and livestock, slaughtering in particular, had to be accounted for to the Ministry of Food, slaughtering in particular.

Paddy Casey, the village bobby, who hailed from Dublin and had married into the village in his youth, wiped at his forehead with a large handkerchief as he related the story, his comments interspersed with loud guffaws of laughter.

‘At first we thought it was his wife. Thought he’d done away with her. Can you believe that.’ His face reddened when he laughed. ‘He’d wrapped the bones up in an old frock. More fool him, and then young Frances …’ Again, laughter. ‘She told them it was probably his missus who ain’t been seen fer years.’

Paddy laughed. Stan laughed. Everybody laughed. Paddy’s laughter was that infectious.

‘If the silly sod hadn’t wrapped the bones up in that old frock, and if young Frances hadn’t said as were probably ’is missus … but you should ’ave seen ’is face – Mr Stead’s, that is. Went white as a sheet.’

‘So where is his wife?’ asked Stan once he’d stopped laughing.

Paddy mopped his forehead, his face, his nose and his chin as he spoke. ‘Nowhere to be found, but that don’t mean she’s dead, only that she don’t want to be found. Can’t say I blame ’er. Stead ain’t one of my favourite characters.’

Stan got to what really concerned him. ‘I take it you’re charging him with regard to my pig?’

Paddy shook his head. ‘No real evidence.’

‘But my cousin saw him burying that sack,’ Mary pointed out.

Paddy shook his head again. By now he was mopping the sweat at the nape of his neck. ‘She’s only a child, and anyway, she did suggest it might be his wife. Kids tell stories. We all know that.’

Paddy’s green-flecked eyes flickered in Stan’s direction. Stan was sitting quietly, his eyes downcast.

Paddy paused by his chair on the way out. ‘Stan. Don’t you be taking the law into your own hands. Hear me?’

Stan got to his feet. ‘Thanks for letting us know what’s happening, Paddy. It’s much appreciated.’

It wasn’t lost on Mary and Ruby that he’d not acknowledged Paddy’s request.

A few days later news spread around the village that Gareth Stead had left very quickly and nobody knew where he’d gone. Nobody threw aspersions in Stan Sweet’s direction, though everyone knew about the stolen pig. Also the rumours of Gareth dealing on the black market were rife. That was also the day when Mary discovered the sack of sugar.

‘Will you say anything?’ Ruby asked her.

Mary shook her head. ‘It’s not worth worrying about, though you could have told me.’

‘Will you tell Dad?’

Again Mary told her she would not. ‘I’ve got other things on my mind. More important things.’

Ruby knew she was referring to Michael Dangerfield.

‘He’ll be fine,’ she said, giving her sister a reassuring hug. ‘No news is good news.’

Ruby was pleased with herself. This afternoon’s demonstration to factory workers in Bedminster, South Bristol, had gone well. The women were making pins of some description. The pins that came to Ruby’s mind were hat pins, safety pins and sewing pins. It turned out that the pins these women were making were for munitions.

Corporal Johnnie Smith commented that she was looking pleased with herself.

‘They were the hardest audience I’ve had, but they understood what I was talking about. I bet most of them have made a meal from a penny all their lives.’

She fancied she saw him smile, but couldn’t be sure. He was a hard nut to crack and never failed to take her down if he could. It occurred to her that he considered her too young and too classy to know what she was talking about. From what he’d said so far, she guessed he came from a pretty tough background, London, if his accent was anything to go by.

‘Just don’t do that again,’ he growled, his mood already back to normal.

She looked down at her hands so he couldn’t see her amusement. She’d actually got him to come up on stage and assist her with the cooking demonstration. He’d been reluctant but both herself and the women in the audience had cheered him on.

‘After all, an army marches on its stomach and you should ensure that yours is always well filled. I’ll make a cook of you yet,’ she’d added in a low whisper.

‘I don’t need to do cooking. I get it done for me.’ He paused. ‘The army supplies everything I need.’

‘I will ask you to do the same again. It’s your duty and if you don’t, I shall have you replaced.’

‘Oh yes!’ he exclaimed angrily. ‘That is so bloody typical of your sort. Miss Bloody High and Mighty. Looking down your nose at the rest of us!’

Ruby lost patience. ‘How dare you! I do not look down my nose! It’s you with the problem, you with the chip on both shoulders!’

Silence reigned all the way home.

On arrival Corporal Smith helped her around the back with the picnic hamper and the suitcase. The back door was unlocked, the kitchen empty. There was no sign of Mary or her father; Frances had returned to Ada’s place in the forest and Gilda, who usually lingered to sip tea and sample Mary’s latest recipes, wasn’t around either.

‘Thank you,’ Ruby said to Johnnie Smith as he set her baggage on the table. ‘See you tomorrow.’

He grunted his usual agreement before sidling off; that in itself was different. Usually he strode off as though marching across a parade ground. Today he was slower.

After taking off her hat and gloves, Ruby considered putting on the kettle, but instead decided to walk along to Stratham House. Perhaps everyone was there taking tea and biscuits with Mrs Hicks. It occurred to her that Michael might have returned, or perhaps there was news of his whereabouts.

It now being June, the air was pleasant and warm, the smell of summer in the air. Nobody would think there was a war on, she thought to herself, yet terrible things were happening in France.

The old gate grated on its hinges when she pushed it open. Because of the weather she’d expected everyone to be sitting outside in Mrs Hicks’s secluded garden listening to the buzzing of bees, the air heavy with the scent of lavender and lilac.

A wrought-iron table and four chairs sat unoccupied in the middle of the lawn.

Ruby felt the first pang of unease. Her father wouldn’t go far with the back door left open.

The sound of the creaking gate had been heard. The front door opened and Mrs Hicks appeared.

Ruby was about to make a remark about everyone hiding from her but stopped herself. The corners of Mrs Hicks’s mouth were downturned and so, it seemed, were the corners of her eyes. Her whole demeanour was one of extreme sadness.

Ruby was overcome with a sudden feeling of weakness, as though her legs refused to walk, her heart refused to pump blood around her body. Something terrible had happened.

Michael! It had to be Michael!

‘Is it Michael?’ she whispered.

Mrs Hicks shook her head. ‘It’s Charlie. Your father came straight over to tell me and Gilda. Mary is here with him. You’d better come in.’

The news was hard to believe. Charlie had survived one sinking but not a second one. This time his ship had been torpedoed by a submarine. Some members of the crew had survived; Charlie had not.

The rest of the day passed in a blur. Charlie had drowned. There would be no body to inter, no walnut coffin or bright array of summer flowers.

It took days for it to sink in. The fine summer weather did nothing to lift anyone’s spirits. People came in to pay their respects. Miriam Powell kept shaking her head and muttering that she’d done everything possible to help him survive. Mary thought about the note – a prayer to the Virgin Mary. She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone and wouldn’t mention it now. There was no point. However, she didn’t want her father to find it.

He visited the churchyard more frequently now, a lonely figure walking across the dewy grass in the early morning, bare-headed, his trilby clenched in both hands.

He looked down at Sarah’s grave and began to tell her what had happened. His words stuck in his throat. He fell down on his knees, bent his head and sobbed until he could sob no more.

I know. Remember you’ve still got two children to care about
…

It wasn’t until he had dragged himself to the lych gate that he understood more clearly those words that had entered his mind. Whether they had come from her for sure, or from his own wish that it was her speaking to him, he’d never been clear. What did strike him was that of course she would know. Charlie was with her and in a strange way it gave him great comfort to know that.

The church was filled with old school friends, the family and those in the village to whom Charlie used to deliver bread on his bicycle.

The vicar opened the memorial service by thanking God for heroes like Charlie, whose final resting place was known only to God.

‘He lives on with God and also in our hearts. May I repeat those famous words, at the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them. We shall remember all those who paid the final price. We pray that Charles Henry Sweet will rest in peace.’

The vicar’s moving words were followed by muffled sobs until drowned out by the sound of a packed church rising to its feet.

The words of the seamen’s hymn soared to the rafters.

The words of the hymn were blurred by the tears in Ruby’s eyes. She held the hymn book with one hand, her other arm hugging the sobbing Frances who didn’t even bother to try and sing, her shoulders were shaking that badly.

Frances had loved Charlie dearly and he in turn had been like an older brother to her. Ruby was convinced that when Frances was a woman, every man she met would have to measure up to her cousin Charlie.

At the end of the pew, on the other side of their father, Mary was sitting straight-backed and staring straight ahead singing the words from memory and thinking of Charlie as a child, clinging to a homemade raft he’d proudly launched on to the Avon, only to have it sink beneath him. Cussing and swearing and spitting out water, he’d clambered to the bank. He’d always been one for seeking adventure and had always loved the water. Even back then he’d wanted to float away and had done once, his home-made craft getting as far as Hanham Abbots.