Winter Roses (20 page)

To take Lizzie’s mind off her own troubles, she told her about Miss Burrows leaving so suddenly; Lizzie had got on well with Kate. ‘It’s been a day of it,’ Margaret said, ‘what with Master George having gone too.’

Lizzie perked up and to her mother’s astonishment sniggered.

‘What are you laughing at all of a sudden?’

‘That’s why, ain’t it? I bet there’s been an almighty row here, hasn’t there?’

‘Yes.’

‘I reckon the Rector found them at it.’

‘At what and who’s them, may I ask?’ Margaret was affronted. The younger generation were a great deal too forward.

‘That Miss Burrows and Master George. Maybe he’s put her up the spout.’

Margaret gazed puzzled at the old brown teapot before her, until she realised what Lizzie was talking about, and it wasn’t teapots. ‘Lizzie Dibble, that’s disgusting. I brought you up to be a lady, and you come out with dirty talk like that.’

‘Sorry, Ma. It’s the farm.’ Lizzie was giggling outright now. ‘And anyway, the talk isn’t what’s important, it’s whether they did it, and I reckon they did.’

‘Master George is a—’ She was going to say a young gentleman, but Lizzie interrupted.

‘A young
man
, Ma, and she’s a young woman with a gleam in her eye and an itch—’

‘Lizzie Dibble, that’s quite enough!’ Her turn to interrupt. Margaret, red-cheeked, took a sip of tea, while she pondered whether there was anything in what Lizzie had said. Master George was still a schoolboy – no, he wasn’t that any longer; but all the same he was brought up a Christian gentleman and this was a rectory. If Lizzie was right – and she wasn’t convinced, mind – it must have been that Miss Burrows who started it. She was just the type. Earthy. Good-natured enough, but … Oh, yes, it was her started it.

‘She can’t be expecting,’ Margaret maintained stoutly. ‘The Rector wouldn’t turn her out if so, and nor would Mrs Lilley.’

‘Plenty would.’

‘But not Ashden Rectory.’

Before Miss Burrows left the next day, she popped her head in the kitchen to say goodbye and it was all Margaret could do not to take a covert look at her stomach. Not that she’d be showing yet, she reasoned. She’d lain awake all night, worrying if Miss Kate were expecting and hadn’t dared tell the Rector.

‘Bye.’ Miss Kate looked just as cheerful as she always did.

Margaret couldn’t stop herself: ‘Where will you be going, miss?’

‘Back home to help dad, and then I’ll enlist.’

‘Enlist?’ That was for men, not girls. Maybe she didn’t hear right. Miss Burrows had a funny way of talking owing to her coming from Yorkshire.

‘I’m in the National Land Service Corps at present,’ Miss Burrows continued, ‘but there are rumours we’re all going to be co-opted into a new Women’s Army to work on the land.’

‘You’re all right, then.’ Margaret was relieved for the Rector’s sake. She couldn’t be in the family way if she was enlisting. All the same, she felt aggrieved that she’d lain awake worrying over nothing at all. It had been nothing to do with Mr George. As if he would …

Strictly speaking, Elizabeth Agnes was not supposed to be in the main part of the house at this time of day, but
she was developing a strong liking for Margaret’s honey biscuits, and having realised she was their sole source, the toddler appeared all too frequently in the kitchen. What a pity Fred wasn’t here, he could look after her. The thought of Fred made sudden tears come to her eyes and Margaret had to blow her nose firmly.

‘By the way, Agnes, Miss Burrows is going back home to Yorkshire. Lizzie thought Master George and she had been doing things they shouldn’t, and in case you were thinking the same, I can tell you you’re wrong. She’s going to sign on for some new government farming army.’

Agnes hesitated. ‘I’m sure you’re right, Mrs Dibble.’

Mrs Dibble glowed in triumph at this minor victory over the young who always thought the worst.

Myrtle, who had been peeling parsnips in the scullery, had brought the products of her toil through the door and must have overheard. Tact was never her strong point. ‘No, Mrs Dibble, I know they have. Master George’s bed weren’t slept in quite a few nights.’

Elizabeth Lilley finished her weekly letter to Caroline almost with reluctance. Writing to her daughter made her seem much nearer, and there were things she could tell Caroline that she couldn’t write about to Felicia. Her mother suspected that she was a great deal nearer the front line than she revealed to them. Surrounded by war, broken bodies and shattered lives as Felicia was, Elizabeth could write to her only of the everyday happenings of the Rectory, and of the latest news, good or bad, from Ashden, for all these things would speak to her of home. What she could
not write about just in order to relieve her own feelings was the Affair Burrows. To Caroline, however, she could, and she had done so.

If only it had been Elizabeth who had run into George emerging from Miss Burrows’ room clad in pyjamas and dressing gown at dawn two days ago, and not his grandmother! She could have dealt with it quietly and without bringing Laurence into it. Lady Buckford had shown no such reticence, and first poor George, then poor Kate, had been hauled into the study for a lecture on behaviour becoming in a gentleman and lady respectively, and conduct proper under a rectory roof. At least Laurence had been firm, and had insisted that he and he alone would deal with it. The lecture had bounced off Kate like water off a duck’s back.

‘By gum, Rector,’ she’d said (Laurence later confessed to her, trying not to laugh, his wife suspected), ‘don’t you worry about me. I enjoy it.’

When he had suggested tactfully to Kate that she had been at the Rectory long enough, she beamed her thanks for his consideration and said she’d been thinking that way herself, and if he was ever up Yorkshire way, to be sure to call in for a glass of hot whisky and lemon.

George’s retribution, however, had been no laughing matter, and by the time his father had finished with him, they looked like a couple of glaring turkey cocks. Poor George had departed without even saying goodbye to Laurence, which upset him even more. Indeed, Elizabeth was quite sure that it was tension over George’s departure that had led Laurence to such wrath, preventing his
displaying his usual ability to have his say and then smooth over the rancour. Now George had gone, and the absence of his noisy cheerfulness left a silence that would be hard to fill, especially with Kate leaving.

At least Elizabeth had, thanks to Mrs Dibble, found the solution for her absence – if it worked out in practice. Beatrice Ryde’s face had coloured with pleasure when she’d asked her to help with the rotas. (Once they had got over the embarrassment of the ulster. Too late, Elizabeth remembered who had given it to her.) She was still a little doubtful, for Beatrice lacked the gift of getting on with the villagers; she too often treated them like the schoolchildren they had once been, and coaxing was a verb unknown to her. Elizabeth knew she would have to tread carefully.

Much more of her own time had to be devoted to parishioners, for Charles Pickering, their curate, had at last been called up in November, much to his disgust – not, she guessed, because he was a shirker, but because he was leaving the field for Beth Parry’s affections wide open for Philip Ryde. Philip had lost no time, and Elizabeth admitted she was glad of it. Philip deserved a good wife, and Beth Parry, though as resolute as his sister Beatrice, had a great deal more compassion in her manner.

How strange to think it had once seemed possible that Caroline might marry Philip. She could see now it would never have worked, and nor even would marriage to Reggie. War had shone a spotlight onto pre-war Ashden life; it hadn’t so much changed people, in Elizabeth’s view, but revealed a truth that might otherwise have been years in emerging. Perhaps it might never have done so, but it
was too late now. Seeing Caroline with that Belgian officer at Christmas had made that fact glaringly obvious. She grieved for herself, not only because Caroline might never return to the Rectory, but because two of her daughters were walking away to where she could no longer help them.

Today’s problem, Elizabeth, she reminded herself. There was the catering for the wedding to be arranged.

There were so many memorial services, so much bereavement everywhere, that a wedding, even in this cold, hard winter, was to be enjoyed as much as possible. Even baptisms now had an air of sadness about them, for the fathers were often far away in the trenches instead of standing proudly by the font; and confirmations brought the realisation that children were growing up, and if the war did not end soon, they would be called up to fight.

She would ask Caroline to try to come home for the wedding. It was not a good time of year to travel, but oh, how she’d love to have her here. Beth and Philip wanted a small gathering, and Elizabeth had offered the Rectory drawing room and kitchen services so that Beatrice need not be bothered with the cooking. At first Miss Ryde had indignantly demurred, then at Philip’s prompting agreed.

Catering brought a less welcome next task, too, and this one infuriated her, since it was so unnecessary. But then wherever Lady Buckford went, unnecessary trouble followed. No sooner was the matter of George dealt with – if that was the right word – than the Gorgon bobbed up on a different front. And this time, Elizabeth, not Laurence, had no option but to deal with it herself.

Elizabeth hesitated before knocking gently on the kitchen door, hardly bearing to contemplate the hurt she had to inflict, and knowing there was nothing she could do about it. She had already had her say to her ladyship, without any effect whatsoever, and perhaps there was a chance that it would come as a relief to Mrs Dibble.

‘Did you manage to get some meat for the weekend, Mrs Dibble?’

‘I did, madam, and Wally Bertram says he’ll see we’re all right even if rationing does come in.’

‘I don’t think—’ Elizabeth had started to say she didn’t think her husband would approve of that, but changed her mind. Her real mission was, alas, more important. ‘Lady Buckford spoke to me this morning, Mrs Dibble—’ (Of course she did. Of course, the old so-and-so would get someone else to do her dirty work for her.) ‘She’s heard from the Board of Agriculture about the cookery demonstrations in the Great Hall in Tunbridge Wells.’

Mrs Dibble’s face grew pink. ‘It’ll be a pleasure, Mrs Lilley. We’ll show those Wells folk what Ashden can do.’

Elizabeth ploughed on as best she could. ‘However, Lady Buckford was concerned about you. She felt that with all your responsibilities in the Rectory and the demonstrations in Ashden, Tunbridge Wells would be too much for you to cope with.’ Elizabeth’s heart sank as she saw the excitement ebbing away from Mrs Dibble’s face.

‘I can manage my own responsibilities, thank you, madam. I’m quite capable, please tell her ladyship.’

‘I’m afraid that with the best of intentions Lady Buckford has replied to the board that her maid Miss
Lewis will be in charge of the Tunbridge Wells course.’

Mrs Dibble went very pale. She sat down, a thing she’d never do normally while Elizabeth was here. ‘She’s not a cook,’ she replied flatly.

‘She
can
cook, her ladyship says—’

Mrs Dibble interrupted. ‘Her ladyship don’t know a thing about it. There’s more to cooking than following a recipe book.
And
to teaching.’

‘You can—’ Elizabeth stopped, for the unthinkable had happened. Mrs Dibble was crying.

‘Just go, madam, if you’d be so kind,’ came her muffled voice.

Comfort her? Go and tell Lady Buckford what she thought of her? Bring Laurence into it? Mrs Dibble might resent her comfort at a time of such an unusual breakdown. Elizabeth decided she had to tackle Lady Buckford.

‘I fail to understand your meaning, Mrs Lilley.’ Lady Buckford eyed her frostily from the straight-backed armchair in her sitting room.

‘I’ve made it quite clear,’ Elizabeth blazed. ‘As I told you this morning, your action, without even consulting Mrs Dibble who has been wholly responsible for making your scheme a success, was a gross insult to her.’

‘On the contrary, I had every consideration for your housekeeper, which is why I am sacrificing my own comfort by sending Miss Lewis.’

‘You are not doing it out of consideration for her, but for your own prestige. I presume you consider Miss Lewis has more social standing than Mrs Dibble.’

‘She is a gentlewoman, certainly.’

‘And you think that makes any difference?’

‘Would you kindly not bellow at me, Mrs Lilley?’

‘I’ll bellow all I like,’ Elizabeth shouted, over a year’s bottled feelings released. ‘It might make you see I’m
here
. I’m Elizabeth, I’ve been married to your son for nearly thirty years, I’m the mother of your grandchildren, and I am not a serving wench to be—’

‘
What
is going on here?’ Laurence rushed in, breathless from running up the stairs. ‘I can hear you shouting from the study.’

Elizabeth took a deep breath. ‘Lady Buckford will tell you, Laurence.’

‘Your wife appears to have taken offence at my disinterested actions.’

Laurence listened to his mother while Elizabeth fumed, then put his finger on the salient point. ‘Does Mrs Dibble want to do these courses?’

Elizabeth nodded. ‘Passionately. I’m afraid I hadn’t realised how much, or I would not have let this get so far.’

‘Then, Mother, you should write to the Board of Agriculture and tell them there’s been a change in plan.’

‘I will not do so, Laurence.’

‘You
will
do so, Mother,’ he said gently. ‘You are under our roof and must take note of our wishes.’

Elizabeth, weak at the knees, felt guilty that Laurence had been drawn into the argument, but greatly relieved that he was.

‘If you insist on this sentimental course of action,’ Lady Buckford retorted icily, ‘I will follow your instructions.
However, I shall no longer remain in this house. I have a home in Dover.’

Down on the ground, thrown, punched out of the game, Elizabeth knew when the game was lost.