Winter Roses (10 page)

To her horror his face crumpled, and he hid his face in his hands, his shoulders sagging with misery. Her Jamie was crying. Terror replaced jubilance, as she threw herself at his side and put her arms round him. ‘Tell me, my love, tell me what’s wrong.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can. Tell me.’

‘All right. I don’t deserve the flaming DCM,’ he yelled, sitting upright and staring at her like he thought she would spit on him.

‘They decide that, Jamie, not you.’

‘But I
know
I don’t, Agnes. It looked as if I did, but I didn’t, and they won’t believe me. They think I’m being modest. Christ, if it were only that. I wanted any old campaign medal, just to show them, not a fucking DCM I didn’t win fair and square.’

This time Agnes ignored the bad words. ‘
Why
don’t you think you deserve it?’

‘The Somme,’ he muttered in despair. ‘The bloody, bloody,
bloody
Somme. Oh, this was going to win us the war, this was the big offensive we’d all been waiting for. A couple of days and the Kaiser would be screaming for mercy. And what happened? We all got massacred. Just capture Ovillers they said. It sounded so blooming simple. Our brigade wasn’t even in the first assault; we were held back, 35th and 37th could capture it easy. A couple of villages on the German line that bulged out towards us,
one of them only fifty yards away, and between them were two valleys we called Sausage and Mash. That’s a laugh. It was us was the sausage and mash. Mincemeat, that’s what they made of us. The 35th and 37th didn’t get Ovillers so they sent in the Sussex. The Germans would be softened up by now, they said. Not bloody likely. They’d had their appetite whetted. Must have been a big joke seeing all our shells falling short, exploding too soon, and hitting us. The CO told us afterwards eighty per cent of us were stiffs in ten minutes, what with that and the machine-gun fire. Sausages? We were trapped like rats. Our company lost all our officers to the machine guns. After that no one knew where we were going. Some platoons got lost, so the story went later. Without the officers, you’re done for in the blue. Then I saw there
was
one officer left, who seemed to be going in the right direction at any rate, so I led the rest of my platoon as fast as I could after him.’

‘That was brave of you, Jamie. You could have gone back.’

‘No, it ain’t brave. You don’t have time to think or you wouldn’t do anything so daft. You’d drop where you were, hide in a shell-hole and no one could blame you for that.’

‘And that’s what’s been worrying you?’ Oh, the relief.

‘No. It’s what I had to do to go on, and you’ll see why I ain’t so brave. My mate, Joe – we’ve been together since training days – copped it from one of those shells that fell short. One minute he was running at my side, the next he disappeared, and I was knocked sideways face down in the mud. I got up and there was Joe. He was still alive, Agnes. He … I’m not going to tell you.’

‘Yes, you are.’ She steeled herself.

‘His leg was blown off, and half his face gone, and his guts spilling out, but he was living, and he knew me. I could have got him back to the lines, but I bloody well went on and became a bloody hero. Now do you see?’

Agnes thought rapidly. His eyes were beseeching as though his whole life depended on what she said next. ‘No, Jamie, I don’t see. War is like that. You have to do what seems best at the time.’

‘But I was a f—a blinking coward, not a hero. Suppose I was scared of him dying on me? Suppose I was scared it would take so long a bullet with my name on it would get me easy? I was panicking, not thinking.’

‘What happened to Joe, Jamie?’

‘He died later.’

‘And what happened to you and the men you were leading?’

‘We got as far as we could, then they stopped the attack. It took another couple of weeks and more to get that bloody village.’

‘How many of those men you led died, Jamie?’

‘Two or three. Most of us got back to the lines.’

‘And who recommended you for the DCM? The officer?’

‘Yes, and the chaps backed him up. They didn’t know, you see—’

‘Oh yes they did,’ Agnes interrupted calmly. ‘They knew that you led them through hell and back and that they were still alive, instead of having been mown down by the next barrage. They lived, thanks to you.’

‘You think so?’ Jamie began to sob in relief.

‘Now, Jamie, I want you to go straight in to tell the Rector you won the DCM.
Not
about Joe, for he’s nothing to do with the medal. He’s your private loss.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You can.’ Agnes paused. ‘You have to, because now I’m going to tell Mrs Dibble about it.
Then
we can go to tell your mother.’

‘A medal?’ Margaret almost screeched. ‘Well I never did. You’ll both be too high and mighty for the Rectory kitchen now.’

‘I won’t,’ replied Agnes laughing. ‘It’s Jamie has won it, not me.’

‘Rector’s grandfather won a medal in the Crimean War, but you’d expect that, wouldn’t you, his being a lordship? Fancy your Jamie getting one. It just shows. We’re all alike really.’

Margaret tried hard to assimilate this news. Perhaps Agnes and Jamie would go to the palace and could have had a word with His Majesty about Fred. No, she would write her letter now, not that she had much hope. After all, His Majesty was spending a lot of his time encouraging the troops and was in uniform himself. It was the Queen who realised they were fighting a war here too, bless her. Perhaps she should write to Queen Mary, not King George.

She was still pondering this dilemma when Mrs Lilley knocked and came in. ‘Mrs Isabel and I cooked up a wonderful idea while you were away, Mrs Dibble.’

Margaret treated this with caution. Other people’s wonderful ideas tended to result in more work for
her. Normally she didn’t mind, but life seemed to be steamrollering over her and it was time she looked out for herself. She immediately began to bristle. ‘I can’t do it, Mrs Lilley, and that’s flat.’

‘I realise that. However, Mrs Isabel is the new manager at the cinema, and she has suggested that during the mornings the cinema could be used for the cookery lectures and demonstrations. It would provide a better venue than the Village Institute, since that has no stage.’

‘And who’s to give them?’

‘Mrs Isabel said she could ask her housekeeper, Mrs Bugle.’

Margaret nearly exploded. ‘Mrs Bugle, madam, as you know full well, couldn’t cook a boiled egg, even if we had any eggs to boil, which we don’t.’ Mrs Bugle had elected not to go to East Grinstead but to remain to ‘look after the army’. ‘What’s wrong with my cooking, Mrs Lilley, if I might ask?’

‘Nothing. You would be ideal.’ Mrs Lilley had a look of surprise on her face. ‘Naturally we thought you would be too busy.’

‘I’m never too busy to do my bit for England,’ Margaret replied severely. ‘You can tell her ladyship that, and you can tell Mrs Isabel too. Percy can take that old portable stove over to the cinema right away while I have a good think about it.’

After Mrs Lilley had gone, it briefly occurred to her that Mrs Lilley might not have been serious about asking Mrs Bugle, but the thought vanished; even if she wasn’t, she couldn’t take the risk. After all, it was only patriotic
for the Rectory to take the lead in such matters, even if it meant showing a lot of flibbertigibbet young wenches how to cook good honest Sussex food.

She could even make a start now, getting out her recipe book which she had inherited from her mother and painstakingly kept up. The days of ‘take a dozen eggs’ – meant for large families and times when the word ‘shortage’ would never be heard in a kitchen – were gone. Still, it might give her some ideas for wartime recipes. Her mother had been a great one for God’s gifts. The good Lord provided a lot of food in his meadows and hedgerows to eke out the produce from the Rectory garden. Percy was growing more and more, so perhaps she should ask him to give talks on growing your own vegetables, using not only every available inch of the garden, but any old tub or box on a windowsill as well. Mustard and cress would grow a treat there. Miss Caroline had even told Percy he’d have to dig up the lawn soon, and she was only half joking in Margaret’s opinion.

She could instruct her ladies on how to make things go further; no selling unwanted bones or fat at the kitchen door to the fat-collectors without boiling them up first. Even tiny strips of fat could be boiled in water and reduced to a nice solid cake for frying. She could tell them how old bits of celery could be dried in a slow oven, and used weeks later in soups and stews. And how God provided not only mushrooms but dandelion leaves, chestnuts, wild garlic, nasturtium seeds … Didn’t she have a recipe in her book for Sussex chestnut soup?

Margaret found herself getting quite excited at the idea
of her forthcoming demonstrations. She’d even put up with her blooming ladyship’s presence if she had to. She browsed through the book so long that she didn’t notice the time. When at last she did, it dawned on her that Myrtle was taking a very long time to come back with the bicarb. It wasn’t like her to run out of this essential ingredient, and especially with the sugar shortage getting worse. Bicarb cut the need for sugar in stewing acidy fruits and she didn’t want to be reduced to her mother’s old trick of a piece of bread in the pan.

She looked up sharply as Myrtle shot through the door. She’d give her a piece of her tongue – no shortage of that at least.

‘I forgot,’ was Myrtle’s only defence.

‘You
forgot
? Now—’ she broke off, aware of the girl’s white face. ‘Whatever’s wrong, Myrtle?’

Myrtle promptly burst into sobs. ‘They were all talking about it at the general stores. That’s why I forgot it.’

‘I daresay a bit of bicarb isn’t the end of the world.’ Margaret was quite surprised that Myrtle was still taking her job so seriously. Maybe she had been a bit sharp.

‘It’s the factory. It’s blown up.’

‘What factory?’

‘There was an accident and some shell cases exploded and caught others and, oh, Mrs Dibble, she’s
dead
.’

‘Who? Where, girl?’

‘Harriet. In the munitions factory. And lots of others too, the girls mostly, dead. Terrible accident it was.’

Margaret tried hard to assimilate this new tragedy, one which affected the Rectory too. Harriet Mutter had been
housemaid here, and gone off to make good. The canaries, that’s what they called the munitions girls, because of the yellow colour of their faces from the stuff they packed in the shells ‘… and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row’. Only they weren’t pretty any more, they were dead, and no amount of hymns would help change that.

‘It seems to me, my girl,’ she said heavily, ‘we’re fighting on the Sussex front here, just as our lads are on the western front. What with Zeppelins and deaths, and now this …’ She made Myrtle a cup of tea. The girl had had a shock, and they were all in this together.

Later that evening Percy returned from mending Nanny Oates’s mincing machine (via the Norville Arms, if she guessed aright, only for once she didn’t care). He had the full story. Harriet and six other girls had been killed, two of them from Ashden. Thirty had been badly injured. The Rector had been out all evening with the Mutters and the parents of the other two girls, and Mrs Lilley had gone with him. They were bringing the bodies back from East Grinstead tomorrow, and Harriet’s uncle, George Mutter, was taking over the coffins. Bert Wilson of Lovel’s Mill, home on leave and sweet on Harriet for many a long year, for all she’d hardly give him the time of day recently, was said to be sobbing his heart out, poor lad.

‘Is the whole factory gone, Percy?’

‘They say old Swinford-Browne is opening up what’s still standing tomorrow. Patriotic, he calls it. I calls it greed. Folks have got no respect nowadays.’

‘At least he won’t show his fat face back here wanting to build nasty factories. If I’m going to be blown up, I’d
rather it was by a soldier than that Swinford-Browne.’

With this melancholy thought, only cheered by the fact that she’d be seeing Lizzie and the baby tomorrow, Margaret went to bed, so sick at heart that she forgot to read her passage from the Good Book – her nightly ritual, each chosen at random in the hope that the Lord might in this way be sending her a personal message.

When she arrived in the kitchen the next morning, it seemed He must be punishing her, for yet another problem for the Rectory family (in which she included herself) emerged an hour or two later. Miss Phoebe, instead of being out delivering post, had still been abed. She crept shamefacedly into the kitchen for something to eat when her parents were safely out of the way. She had a face as long as a jumping-pole.

‘Whatever are you doing here, Miss Phoebe? Aren’t you well?’

‘They don’t want me any longer at the post office.’ Phoebe tried to sound offhand, but failed.

‘Why not?’ To her way of thinking it was a good thing, however upset Miss Phoebe was.

‘I was late too often, and then yesterday the bag was so heavy I had to leave some of it in the hedge while I delivered down Silly Lane. You know it’s impossible to ride a cycle down there. That beastly old Farmer Lake reported me and old Ma Jasper gave me a lecture about the sanctity of the Royal Mail, and said she’d manage without me. It’s not fair. It was perfectly safe.’

‘Deserve success and you shall command it,’ Margaret announced cryptically. ‘That’s what my father said.’

Phoebe kicked the table leg crossly. ‘I
did
deserve it.’

‘What are you going to do now? Help your ma with the farm rotas?’

‘I’m sick of rotas.’

‘We’re all sick of a lot of things, but we have to do them.’

‘The worst thing about being a Rector’s daughter is that other people nag you all the time.’ Phoebe was aggrieved. ‘I’m boffled, as you say. Yet look at how I stuck to the canteen job, until they wanted to move me. I was never late.’

‘Because you enjoyed it. So what
are
you going to do?’

‘I’ll think of something, don’t you worry.’ Phoebe marched out of the kitchen like a martyred saint, and that she wasn’t.