Winter Roses (13 page)

‘Using code, I see,’ Luke remarked, leaning over her shoulder one day.

‘How about a new typewriter?’ she asked savagely.

‘Sorry. Only Belgian refugees get new typewriters.’

‘I
am
a refugee,’ she muttered. ‘I’m being driven out of my mind.’

And not only at the office. Her lodgings were hardly a home from home. Her landlady, Mrs Clark, was thin and anxious,
with a husband away at the front, and her mind seemingly always there with him. When she caught sight of any of her four lodgers, she invariably looked slightly surprised as though wondering what these people were doing in her house. It was a strange life, and mealtimes tended to be like the Mad Hatters’ tea parties, with Caroline presiding as Alice. There was an elderly lady who had lodged here for years, who like the dormouse said very little and that in a whisper; a middle-aged railway worker from somewhere in the north of England; and the Mad Hatter, who had worked for a tailor and wore a mental top hat all the time. It usually fell to Caroline to initiate any conversation, but sometimes she was too tired to discuss anything but the weather.

It took a week before her first post arrived, and there – oh wonderful – was a letter from home. She remembered how much that had meant to her when she was in Dover. Eagerly she tore it open.

‘Dearest Caroline.’ Her mother’s large sprawling handwriting leapt out at her. ‘How we miss you. Especially me. Mrs Dibble’s face is even longer since you left. I shouldn’t say that, with the terrible news about Fred (though she doesn’t know about it yet), and indeed she seems to be doing her best to cooperate over these cooking lectures. She even said your grandmother would be welcome to introduce the first one …’

Terrible news? What was it? Mother must have forgotten that she had had no way of hearing such things. She would have to plead with Luke to let her use the section’s telephone. Oh
bother.
She crammed on her hat,
and half ran, half walked to the section office. If she was there before Luke he wouldn’t know … She gasped out a quick prayer for forgiveness, but He couldn’t be listening for Luke
was
there, and she had to explain to him just why it was so important. He picked up the receiver and handed it to her without a murmur (had he heard from Felicia?) and in a few moments she was speaking to her mother.

‘What was wrong?’ Luke asked as she put the telephone receiver back in its cradle, distressed at what she had heard.

‘The authorities have gone back on their undertaking to keep our housekeeper’s son Fred on home-service duties. Father hasn’t broken the bad news to Mrs Dibble yet. He’s making one final appeal through Sir John, but has very little hope of its succeeding. They need every man they can get for the front, and Fred’s one of them.’

Margaret felt as if she were off to serve in the trenches herself, as she set forth with Percy to give her first cookery talk. She had decided to call it ‘Fighting the Food War’, and she bore a suitably militant expression on her face, but that was no help when she was all too well aware that inside she was quaking like a two-year-old. She might be queen in the Rectory, but now she had to capture unknown territory, and, worse, she would have the Lord High Executioner with her. Lady Blooming Buckford would be sitting on the platform, watching every move she made. A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck, Margaret encouraged herself, but it didn’t help.

She had been in a quandary over the cooking. One small portable stove hardly seemed enough, and it was no good showing these women how to prepare food if you couldn’t show them the finished result. Only God was privileged
not to do that when He offered us the Kingdom of Heaven. Stews were another matter. It was no use expecting them to cook in under three hours, and her audience would still be there when Mrs Isabel began to show her Charlie Chaplin films. Margaret had agonised over this dilemma for some days, until even Percy noticed something was wrong: ‘Fred?’ he had asked.

‘My stewed cow heel,’ she had replied gloomily. No news was good news as far as Fred was concerned.

‘Now look, Daisy,’ Percy had obviously decided for once in his married life to assert himself, ‘it’s no use your getting all het up about this. You could do it standing on your head.’

She’d been so surprised at this unusual support that she had told him what was bothering her.

‘Take two of them,’ was his answer.

‘Pardon?’

‘Prepare one there, but take one already cooked.’

She stared at him as though this were some stranger she had suddenly found herself married to. ‘Percy Dibble, maybe you’re not so chuckleheaded, after all.’

Percy had almost burst with pride, and then excelled himself even further. ‘Why don’t you cook one here, then pop one in the haybox to finish off, and I’ll take it over. You’re always saying there’s nothing to beat the old haybox.’ There was a new note of authority in his voice, of which Margaret didn’t altogether approve, although for once it was welcome.

Clothes proved her next worry. She was representing England’s best interests and must dress the part. As is the
cook, so is the kitchen, she reminded herself, so if she wanted her work respected, she had to think about what she should wear, even if her pinny covered the lot. She had held out for some time against adopting the shorter length of skirt, but when even she could ignore no longer the patriotic need to save material, Margaret’s ankles had slowly and cautiously appeared, reluctantly followed by an inch or two of calf. She had to admit it made life easier. Today she had put on her best, a navy-blue costume she’d made before the war and shortened. A nice pouched blouse with it, and her grandmother’s gold brooch, and her old wide-brimmed hat with the headband, and she was all set. Ten-thirty to eleven-thirty was the time she’d arranged, so it didn’t interfere too much with her Rectory routine – if such a thing as routine could be said to exist now that daily life was all over the place.

A new worry came into her mind as she crossed the road to Bankside. What if no one came? She’d be the laughing stock of Ashden.

‘They will,’ Percy declared with his new-found assertiveness. ‘You’ll see.’

She didn’t see anything of the kind. As they walked in, her worst forebodings appeared fulfilled. The audience was as sparse as currants in a wartime cake.

‘It’s only ten o’clock,’ Percy pointed out. ‘You don’t begin till half past.’

Margaret sniffed, unconvinced, but decided to turn her mind to yet another worry. Would Agnes be able to cope with Rectory luncheon? The girl meant well, but Margaret had had to turn her eyes away when she saw her peeling the
carrots so thick. And what about stage fright? She’d heard of such things. You opened your mouth and no words came out. Suppose Mrs Coombs from the Dower House was there, or Dr Marden’s housekeeper? Or even – a new horror loomed up – that Dr Parry, who was interested in diet from a professional point of view.

In her mind, all these dragons sat waiting in the front row, to sink their fangs into Margaret Dibble’s reputation, while from behind her on the stage Lady Buckford had a dagger ready to plunge in her back. Her hand trembled a little as she laid out her knives and bowls on the table, setting up her own little kingdom. The haybox, with the stew finishing off inside, sat on the floor in front of the red screen curtains, and the portable spirit stove was behaving itself.

She felt a little more confident as she unpacked her ingredients, and the hall began to fill up, until the thought flashed through her mind that they were all coming to see Margaret Dibble made a fool of, not to learn how to bottle plums. Then she saw Lady Buckford walking majestically up the aisle with Mrs Isabel, which, oddly enough, served to settle her down nicely. There was one good thing about an old enemy: you knew where you were with them.

By the time ten-thirty came, you couldn’t have squeezed another person in, not if it was Lady Hunney herself, which it wasn’t. Margaret didn’t hear a word of Lady Buckford’s speech, she was in too much of a bivver. All she could think of was the moment she had to rise from her chair, look at all those faces out there, and open her mouth.

Clocks never ran backwards, and when Lady Buckford sat down, Margaret found herself on her feet, instead of
glued to her chair as she’d feared. She swayed slightly at the sea of faces raised to hers, and terror seized hold of her. Then a voice inside her head told her: Margaret Dibble, you can do it. She glared at her audience.

‘It’s no use you thinking there’ll be strong liquor in my food. There won’t be; we need all the wits we was born with to fight the Kaiser, and I’m here to show you how to fight on the Sussex front.

‘I’m going to start with a few words about what the Good Lord has provided free in His fields and hedgerows in the way of weapons, and there won’t be no nettle beer either. You can find your own recipes for alcoholic beverages. You won’t hear from my lips about anything other than the good wholesome food we’re ignoring, and how to make our food stretch further. After that, I’m going to show you how to cook a nice cow heel with parsley sauce, and if it’s good enough for the Rector, it’s good enough for you …’

She was back. Agnes hadn’t made too much of a pig’s dinner of family luncheon. The fish pie was quite tasty. Margaret beamed approval at the table in the grandly named servants’ hall. She deserved the treat of not cooking this meal herself; everyone had seemed really interested in her talk and crowded round the stage as she did her demonstration. The stew had popped out of the haybox just lovely and she gave it to poor Mrs Hubble who had a hard time of it now Timothy was gone. Margaret congratulated herself she was a village personality now, and then hastily told herself not to pat herself on the back. She’d done it for England, not herself.

After dinner, the Rector asked her to pop into his study, and she wasn’t surprised. He must have heard from his mother how well she’d done.

It wasn’t about that, though; it was about Fred, and she came out feeling as if she’d got a half-cooked suet pudding inside her. Some of it was in her stomach, but most was in her heart. Rector had said he was being sent home on leave, but what was the use of that now? She made a great effort to move the leaden weight by reminding herself that others were suffering too.

Miss Caroline was learning French, so Mrs Lilley said, which sounded bad. Miss Felicia and Miss Tilly were over in France; surely they couldn’t take Miss Caroline too? It would just about break Mrs Lilley’s heart, like it would any mother’s. While they remained within the boundary of England’s shores, it felt as if they could be home any day. Over there was a long way away. And once you were there, over there you stayed.

Like Fred. That’s what this leave was for. Come and kiss me quick, Mother, because I’m going over there.

Margaret decided to prepare her next talk. A week went quickly, and it was only five days away now. Besides, it took her mind off what was happening elsewhere. Before this war, you knew where you were. The Rectory came first, but you were all part of the family; your own kith and kin just got along with life as best they could without much worry from you. Now it was all different, everyone was going their own way, so you had to worry about everybody. Percy had gone up to London to meet Fred off the Hertford train.
Fred wouldn’t know how to cross London to Victoria if he wasn’t met; he’d just sit on the platform till it was time to go back, his happy old grin on his face, bless him. But he wouldn’t be going back. Not for long, anyway.

No wonder her letter to King George had had no answer save a printed acknowledgement. Young Jamie hadn’t gone to the Palace to get his medal personally, so she’d had to send her letter by post. It was nice the Rector had made a point of Jamie’s medal in his morning service, so the whole village knew he was a hero. Agnes had been so proud, and even little Elizabeth Agnes had sat quiet for once while her daddy was being praised.

She would concentrate on fruits of the field in the next demonstration and maybe plum heavies. Fred liked them. Margaret pulled herself up. No thinking of Fred. How about thinking of Mrs Isabel? She had not, as Margaret had predicted to Percy, given up her cinema job in a few days; she was carrying on like a trouper. Who’d have thought that? There’d been a few wails and tears at first, and Mrs Lilley had had her work cut out calming her down, and had even gone across to the picture palace with her one day.

As far as Margaret could piece together, Norman Mutter the projectionist, who had a weak chest and couldn’t join up, Mrs Taylor who took the money in the grandly named box office, and Ruth Horner, who showed people to their seats and flashed torches on those who might be doing what they shouldn’t be doing till they was wed (not that she could talk), joined forces against her. They turned themselves into a quartet with old Miss Spenser who played the piano, usually several minutes behind the action, so
that she banged out ragtime or the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in the middle of Douglas Fairbanks kissing Mary Pickford.

Together they had set out to make life difficult for Mrs Isabel, seeing her just as another of them Swinford-Brownes. He might still pay their wages, but now he had moved away he was no threat. Mrs Lilley’s presence that day had reminded them that Mrs Isabel was also the Rector’s daughter, and that Rector
hadn’t
moved away.

After that, life was easier, and Mrs Isabel had even come to seek the servants’ opinion on what to screen. That showed times were changing. Before the war, Mrs Isabel didn’t think servants
had
opinions.

‘I’m going to obtain the film the government has made about the Somme battle,’ Mrs Isabel had told her, full of her own importance. ‘Then all of us can see what our menfolk are achieving, and in a little way share their hardships with them.’

‘They’re achieving precious little, in my opinion,’ Margaret had answered. ‘And what about those who’ve had enough of war? How about
Birth of a Nation
?’ She was no picture-goer, but even she knew from Miss Caroline how good this new D. W. Griffith film was, even though it was American, and lasted longer than her stews took to cook. ‘Then you’ve got war
and
stories of people.’

‘Yes.’ Mrs Isabel seemed doubtful. ‘It would cost too much money though.’

‘Worth it.’

‘I could ask, I suppose. But I still think Ashden should see what’s going on in France for themselves. We could show the Somme film on our anniversary in November.’

‘You was married in August.’

‘The
cinema’s
anniversary. It’s been open two years.’

‘I shouldn’t remind that father-in-law of yours.’ The opening day of the cinema had not covered William Swinford-Browne in glory.

Mrs Isabel laughed. ‘Even he couldn’t object to a grand showing of
The Battle of the Somme.
’

Out she went in a flurry of skirts, letting the door bang behind her as usual.

‘
Battle of the Somme
,’ Margaret muttered. Fancy that, and fancy Mrs Isabel even coming to talk to her.

Meanwhile she had the Rectory to run, as well her cinema lessons, and there was planning to be done for the spring. There was tomorrow to think of too. They’d let Fred get accustomed to home again, and then they’d have a bit of a party. Muriel, Joe’s wife, said she’d get the 10.12 train from Hartfield with the little ones, Sunday service or not, and Lizzie would bring the new baby – Fred would enjoy that. That’s if he remembered who everyone was. She shivered at the thought she might see the same lack of recognition in his face as she had at Hertford. It was all very well to wear a bright smile on your face, but sometimes it was all she could do to keep it there.

She’d think of food: that never let you down. She could spare a bit of sugar for a cake surely. Cravenly, she decided Mrs Lilley need never know. Those sugarless cakes didn’t taste right and she had a fair bit of sugar stored up for Christmas. The Lettices knew which side their bread was buttered on. She supposed she should say fatted on, for no one spoke of butter, or margarine, or oil. It was just ‘fats’.
Fred liked fairy cakes too; she might be able to dab a bit of icing on some for him. She used to put animals on the icing before this war. At least the Kaiser wasn’t sinking jelly supplies. She could make a nice milk one. And there had to be one of her special trifles. And cinnamon sandwiches. When was she going to get all this done? The Lord ought to provide for a few more hours in the day during wartime.

There was a quick knock on the kitchen door and Mrs Lilley popped her head in. ‘I forgot to say, Mrs Dibble, that you must take time to bake a cake for Fred’s return. And use what sugar you need.’

‘Thank you, madam,’ Margaret shamefacedly muttered. She often forgot that Mrs Lilley had a habit of thinking along the same lines as herself.