Winter Roses, page 9
‘I shall go on trying, Mrs Dibble. If I kick up enough fuss they may relent. I can also ask Sir John Hunney if he can get a release for him. But don’t pin your hopes on it; Sir John is not in the right department of the War Office to authorise it.’
‘I’m pinning my hopes elsewhere, Rector.’
‘On our Lord, Mrs Dibble?’
‘On His Majesty. I’m writing to him to let him know what kind of army is fighting for him.’
Margaret marched back to the kitchen where she was queen, and only the King of Heaven had precedence over her. It was time to re-establish that fact, and not a moment too soon. ‘What have you been doing here in my absence, Mrs Thorn?’ she demanded of Agnes, having stalked straight in to inspect her larder and stillroom. ‘There’s no flour left.’
‘Mrs Lettice is delivering today. There’s been a delay.’
‘It must have run out a couple of days ago. However did you manage with the cooking, if I may ask?’
‘I enjoyed it,’ Agnes replied peaceably, ‘and we didn’t run out till yesterday.’
Margaret sniffed suspiciously, observing that Agnes looked uncommonly happy. ‘What are you looking so cheerful about? Think you’re going to take over my place, do you?’
‘No.’ Agnes laughed. ‘You know that would be impossible. I’m not a real cook like you. I’m cheerful because Jamie’s home. He came yesterday on an unexpected week’s leave.’
‘God bless us, where is he staying?’ Already she was calculating whether there were enough eggs or whether she should run over to Nanny Oates to see if the hens were laying.
‘With me upstairs. I hope you’ve no objection, Mrs Dibble. Mrs Lilley said it would be all right, and I’ll make sure it doesn’t give you extra work.’
‘What about those Thorns? Doesn’t he want to take you to stay with them?’
‘He says he prefers it here. His mother was upset. Now Len’s had to go into the Army she’s lonely, but ever since there was all that trouble over Ruth Horner, Jamie’s been funny about going home. I don’t try to persuade him too hard; they don’t like me, and I don’t like them, but he ought to take Elizabeth Agnes to see them.’
‘Where’s his lordship now?’
‘He’s in Fred’s workshop. Oh, Mrs Dibble, I’m worried for all I’m glad to see him. He just sits there. He’s polite enough, and talks at meals here, and talks to the Rector, but it’s all yes sir, no sir. He doesn’t really talk. Not even to me.’
‘Finds it strange being home, I expect,’ Margaret said knowledgeably. She remembered poor Miss Caroline pouring her heart out about this problem once. ‘He’s just getting his bearings, don’t you worry, Agnes.’
‘But he’s not my Jamie. He hasn’t been like this before.’
Margaret could see her point. The last leave Jamie had come strutting in fuller of himself than a turkey cock. On the whole she liked Jamie Thorn, but he had been getting too big for his army boots. Even Mrs Lilley had remarked on it, and Percy had been disgusted by the way he sat lazing around with those boots on her precious stool with the tapestry rose she’d worked before she was wed. So if he was quiet, she was inclined to think this was all to the good. In any case, she had other things to worry about. Rectory dinner for instance. Would the flour be here in time for pastry? She’d better get Percy to fetch it. The potato store was low. You never knew where you were nowadays. First it was ‘eat more potatoes’, then it was ‘you can do without potatoes, there aren’t enough to go round’. Ah well, time to be thinking of winter. Lucky she got her bottling over early this year.
Margaret began to relax. She was home again.
After yet another meal at which Jamie said nothing more than he had to, Agnes summoned up her courage. She’d asked him twice to pass the potatoes to Mrs Dibble, and he had glanced at her as though she was a stranger, instead of his Agnes. He even ignored Elizabeth Agnes, and that was hard enough the racket she was making.
After she’d helped Myrtle clear up, and laid the drawing-room fire for the evening, she walked over to Fred’s workshop. It seemed ominous to her that though the sun was shining, the air full of autumn smells, and Michaelmas daisies, nasturtiums and chrysanthemums making the gardens as colourful as in the summer, there was a nip in the air as if to say: Agnes Thorn, you watch out. Winter is coming.
She could see Jamie through the window as she walked by it, so taking a deep breath, she lifted the latch and went in. He was hunched up in his khaki, sitting at Fred’s bench, staring at nothing. It was odd to see him there with Fred’s carved animals all around the shelves, and the bench all higgledy-piggledy like Fred always had things. It looked as if Fred had just popped out for a few minutes.
Jamie looked up warily. ‘Teatime, is it?’ She sensed he was trying to be jolly.
‘No. I want to know what’s wrong, Jamie.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Oh, yes it is. I’m your wife. You’ve got to tell me. Wounded, are you? Shell-shocked?’ She’d heard of such things, even seen one or two at Ashden Manor Hospital, men with vacant eyes, and no visible wounds. They were never the same again, so it was said.
‘No.’
‘What then?’ That was one relief anyway.
‘Nothing, I tell you,’ he shouted at her in sudden rage. Then he looked abashed. ‘Sorry, Agnes, I don’t want to talk. It’s bottled up.’
‘Like Mrs Dibble’s plums?’
He managed a weak grin. ‘Worse.’
‘You’ve only got to break the seal, Jamie,’ she encouraged him. So there was something, and she tried not to show her alarm. She needed to keep calm, if she was to help.
‘There’s no point. I don’t know where to begin. It’s this effing war.’
‘Jamie Thorn!’
‘You see?’ he said bitterly. ‘You don’t understand. Out there there’s more swear words than the other kind, so how can I talk to you if you behave like the blessed Salvation Army?’
‘You’re right, Jamie, and I do want to understand. But what am I to think? You won’t go to see your parents, you won’t talk to me, or even to the Rector. Why not?’
‘No one understands, that’s why. While I’m here I’ve got to see my mum and dad, but I don’t know how, or what to say to them.’
‘Seems to me you’d better talk, Jamie, if we’re ever to understand each other again. Remember,’ she said bravely, ‘what happened before when you wouldn’t tell me the truth, and we were nearly parted?’
His eyes took on a look of cautious hope. ‘All right, I’ll try. You remember the trouble two years ago. Well, my mum in particular didn’t believe me over you know what.’ He avoided looking at her now, both of them aware that Agnes herself had wavered at one time, until she came to her senses. ‘So I told her I’d never come back till I got a medal to show for it.’
‘That was daft, Jamie. It’s you we all want. Not a medal.’
‘But I’ve got one, Agnes.’ His voice went very quiet.
‘You what?’ She almost screamed in her surprise. ‘Jamie Thorn, why didn’t you tell me I was married to a hero? Why—?’
‘It’s not like that,’ he interrupted. ‘I couldn’t tell you. You see, they were recommending me for a Distinguished Conduct Medal, and now it’s been approved, that’s why I’ve got leave.’
Agnes’s mouth dropped open. She’d always wondered why they said shock had that effect, but they were right. Hers really did, and it was her turn to go quiet. ‘A DCM, Jamie. I’ve heard of them. You are a hero. You’ll be famous, and I’m married to you.’ Medals weren’t all for field marshals and officers; ordinary men like Jamie could win them too, for outstanding courage beyond the call of duty. It was a great honour. Her mind whirled as she tried to take it in, and excitement began to well up inside her. Perhaps they’d go to the palace and meet the King. Her Jamie and a parlourmaid, at the palace. This would show Ashden. She felt quite dizzy with the shock of it all, until she came to her senses: ‘Then what’s wrong, sweetheart? Why aren’t you as proud as punch? You must have done something really special and brave.’
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.’
