Easterleigh Hall (40 page)

Annie yelled, ‘I'll clobber you if you move.'

Rough hands were on them, dragging them back, but now Lady Veronica stood beside them, so that the sergeant would have to push against her if he moved. He put up his swagger stick as though to strike. ‘Put that down this instant and instruct your men to unhand Miss Forbes and Miss Fisher. And before you take any horses from this establishment you will talk to me, do you understand, or has common courtesy deserted you in this rush to abscond with our possessions?' Lady Veronica snapped.

In her voice was all the fury and frustration of years of . . . well, what. Bastard Brampton, perhaps, Evie thought. Currant was jumping up at the sergeant now, and only stopped when Lady Veronica roared at him, ‘Enough, for God's sake, you ridiculous dog.'

The soldiers holding Evie and Annie let their hands drop at a look from their sergeant, who groped in his breast pocket and handed Lady Veronica a requisition form. ‘You are required to hand over all horses at this establishment, and I believe there is a stable behind the house in which there are the hunters and field horses.'

Lady Veronica read the form and handed it back. ‘Carry on, Sergeant, but if you touch Tinker I will shoot you.' She pointed to Tinker's stable. ‘She's fifteen years old and not an asset to the military in any way.'

The sergeant straightened, tucked his swagger stick beneath his arm and ground his heels into the cobbles as he marched from her. ‘I think that's a fair point, Your Ladyship.' He was flushed, and rattled. Evie felt the excitement roaring inside her as she watched him leave and at last understood why her menfolk had gone to war. It was, after all, just a game, a damned game.

By lunchtime the horses had gone and the remaining grooms too, because without their animals what was the point? Together they trooped off to the recruitment office in Gosforn. Lady Veronica would attend to Tinker herself, she insisted.

After lunch Lord and Lady Brampton arrived, to the surprise, and disappointment, of them all. Len their chauffeur appeared in the servants' hall in his uniform, with his boots glistening as usual. At teatime, Lady Veronica crept into the kitchen unexpectedly just as Evie was about to enjoy a mug of tea. She held her finger to her lips, her eyes red from crying. Raisin and Currant skittered at her feet before settling under the table. She sat and stared at nothing, and then lifted her head. ‘I need your help, Evie. Father says they have to be shot. They're German dogs. He's insane as well as a bastard.'

Annie had come to the doorway of the scullery and now she faded back into her burrow. Evie knew from the newspapers that this ridiculous panic was affecting the whole of the country like a plague. She sat down and poured tea into the enamel mugs she had set out for Annie and her. She needed some, even if Lady Veronica did not. It had been a hell of a day. ‘Well,
I'm
not going to do it, my lady,' she said.

Lady Veronica threw back her head and laughed. ‘God, I wish you lived upstairs, Evie.'

‘Aye, well you'd get no objection from me,' Evie muttered taking Annie's tea through to her, and whispering that she should slip out through the rear door of the scullery and into the servants' hall that way.

Lady Veronica was absent-mindedly drinking Evie's tea when she returned. Evie collected another enamel mug from the dresser. Lady Veronica watched, then blushed, and put down the mug. ‘I'm so sorry, Evie, I wasn't thinking, I didn't realise. Oh, damnation and bugger. Evie, can you find someone who would have my babies? I will pay for their keep, of course, but this war won't last long and then I can take them back. I will not have them shot and that's that.'

Evie smiled. ‘I'll need a few hours off to go into the village and ask around.'

‘I rather hoped you'd say that, and thank you for being my right hand this morning. Please thank Annie for me.'

Evie said, ‘I'd have done it without mention of the hat.'

The women smiled at one another. ‘The slate's wiped quite clean, I believe,' Lady Veronica murmured.

Mam had the dogs, of course. ‘Why not, pet,' she said as Millie and Evie helped with the proggy mat, while Tim built bricks on the floor. He was crawling fit to burst, and attempting to pull himself up. He'd be walking soon. He was a grand lad at sixteen months. ‘Tim will love them and it won't be for long. Christmas they say it'll be over. You know they came for your da's pigeons? Someone told them that he had some good homers. I believe it was Mr Auberon's batman. Your da's right upset, he is, Evie, but he'll have the shift to take his mind off it.'

Millie was concentrating harder than usual on the proggy mat, shoving through a blue length, her head down. Tim knocked his bricks over with a clatter. ‘How could Roger have known about the homers?' Evie mused, her eyes fixed on Millie, remembering Roger accosting her on the bank holiday. Surely she wouldn't have told him? But what was the point of even asking? By a huge stretch of the imagination it could simply be put down to common knowledge.

Tiredness had carved deep lines on her mam's face, but she smiled as she checked the clock. ‘Grace is at the retirement house today. Why not pop in before you leave, she's still not herself, you know.'

Evie did so, strolling along the path to the front door which Grace opened before she could knock. ‘I saw you arrive at your mam's and hoped you'd come.'

Her face was similarly tired. She stepped on to the path. Evie said, ‘Mam's taking the Brampton dachshunds, so if she finds them too much, would your families have them for a bit? It won't be for long, will it.' She sounded more cheerful than she felt.

Grace linked her arm in Evie's and they studied the marrows. ‘I'll ask them, dearest Evie, but I was coming across to tell you that I'm joining the Voluntary Aid Detachment, you know, the VADs.' Evie wasn't surprised, somehow.

‘Well, a sight more exciting than cooking.' She nudged her friend, and then nudged her again. Grace laughed gently and nudged her back. ‘Nothing's more important than
your
food.When will the convalescents come, has it been decided yet?'

They stood at the gate. Above them the Stunted Tree was as unchanging as ever and now Evie's mind seemed to stutter and stop, then circle round again and again. Yes, it hadn't changed in centuries. The pits had come and the valleys had changed, but not the Stunted Tree. It had always been there, just quietly there. But what if the Germans came, what if their guns blasted their homes, their country? What if they destroyed their houses, these houses?

She gazed at her family's home, and the retirement and emergency homes behind her, and down towards the village, and the pit gantry, the slag heap. What if they tore into their houses like the soldiers had charged into the stable yard, but with rifles blazing?

Evie turned to Grace. ‘It's really here, isn't it? War is really here and nothing will ever be the same again because they're taking our own men, not just the soldiers, so it really is going to be a long job, isn't it?'

Grace had her arm around her. ‘Some say so. But think, Evie, they'll need the women because the men are going, so we can prove ourselves. We can show them that we're just as good as them, and when it's all over they'll have to take us seriously. You know there are no more meetings for the duration, and that Christabel has declared a truce. We're to be good girls and support the men.' She stopped, then shook her head. ‘But though it will help us, we're at war and everything else, including votes, is trivial and like ashes in our mouths.'

Neither spoke, just looked around. How could it be such a glorious day? The sheep were in the meadows, the cows in the corn, but dear God, no horses. They were gone to war.

Evie said at last, ‘Will you come to see the men off when they finally go? If you're still here, of course? They'll train down to Southampton.' She opened the gate, wrapping her shawl more tightly around her, feeling chilled though the weather was balmy.

Grace moved to the gate and opened it. ‘Why would I? I have no one who is leaving.'

Evie just looked at her. ‘You must come. Who knows if you will see him again.'

Veronica dined with her parents and listened to her father as he ranted at the loss of his hunters. ‘Why that idiot husband of yours couldn't pull strings I do not know.'

‘He was too busy going to war, Father,' Veronica said, wondering how Evie could produce such magnificent quenelles when she had had barely an hour, or had Mrs Moore managed to squash them through the hair sieve? She knew the answer to that. She needed to learn to cook, it was disgraceful that she knew the terms but couldn't have done it to save her life. She stopped. Why did everything come back to life and death?

‘Of course he was, and I spoke to him about gazetting Auberon. I can't have Richard shining and Auberon shirking.'

‘Auberon doesn't shirk, Father.' She hated the way he used his knife to peel his apple. It was as though it was a weapon; slicing and slicing. Why didn't he use a dessert knife and fork?

‘Don't contradict your father,' her stepmother said sharply. ‘You are in his home and should show proper deference, especially as he has allowed you and your husband houseroom.'

‘Yes, Stepmama.' Veronica was damned if she'd call her Mama after that little homily.

Archie was at the sideboard. What did the staff think about when the interminable pettiness of upstairs life was played out in front of them? Why had Archie not enlisted? Ah, Auberon had said some must stay. What about the pitmen, they could have stayed safely in the pit? But what a nonsense that was with one dead every few weeks, more injured and the same throughout the coalfields. Veronica laid her napkin on the table. When could she go to her room?

Lady Brampton was looking at Lord Brampton. ‘My dear, weren't you going to discuss with Veronica setting up a hospital here, rather than a convalescent home? You thought the latter smacked of malingering, I seem to remember?'

Once he had dismissed Archie, Lord Brampton described his plan; discussion was an extravagance unknown to him. He listed the steps that he had taken, the provisional order for beds, dependent on final details, the employment of the nurses and VADs, the gazetting of Dr Nicholls as Medical Officer in Chief. ‘I have obtained funding from various sources.'

‘I'm sure you have, Father.' Veronica's tone was dry. ‘Will you both be on hand to assist?' She could barely keep the contempt from her voice.

He flung his napkin on to the table, pushing back his chair. The simmering violence of the man frightened her. It was ever thus. One moment she stood up to him, the next she feared him.

‘Do you think I have time to spend on the housekeeping of a hospital? It will be your task to decide the details of how and where everything will be set up. You were bleating to your stepmother about preferring work to the prospect of marriage, so perhaps you'll make more of a success of this than you have of the pathetic disaster of the other. Still no grandchild, I gather?'

There it was, the mental blow between the eyes. He should be sent in against the Germans to use every one of his dirty tricks to wreak havoc. She sat quite still. Outside, the sky was darkening. Soon it would be September and with the relentlessness of nature, autumn would come. It was unchanging, while everything else went to hell. The worst thing was that her father was right. She had made a pathetic marriage and it was solely due to her. It wasn't Richard's fault. He was just a man, but she didn't want a man, not yet, and besides, he had chosen to kill as a career. Who knew what he might turn into?

Her father said, ‘You will arrange to send down produce to London from the Home Farm and gardens. I will be in Leeds frequently, but London more often. I will not be here above and beyond the bare necessity.'

‘Well, we must endure the loss as best we can.' She wished she was able to keep her mouth shut. It was then that he reached back in a lazy circular movement. She watched it happen, saw the flash of his arm as it struck, felt the shock throughout her body and wanted to groan with the pain of it. Her stepmother delicately touched her napkin to the corners of her mouth. ‘Perhaps you'd like to retire to your room for the evening. We will be leaving after an early breakfast and your father will make a list for you of his requirements.'

Veronica stood, her legs trembling. She fisted her hands, turned on her heel and left the room, but not before she'd noticed that her stepmother's hands were trembling, and in her eyes was a mirror of her own fear. For the first time she wondered if the price the woman had paid for the riches her father had accumulated was proving too high.

She climbed the stairs, her head swimming. She vomited in the bathroom, and was pleased that Lil had left her employment. She wanted no one to see her like this. She struggled to her bed and lay down, looking out at the last of the August afternoon. If Auberon had been here he would have taken the blow in her place. Richard, though, would have parried it like the sergeant had Annie's saucepan, and would then have killed him.

‘But would he really have done that for me?' She whispered the words. She could see him so vividly for a moment, feel the kiss he had laid so gently upon her hand before he left, and something stirred.

IT WAS 15TH
August, a week after the men had left, and a beautiful day. The Forbes relatives were quiet as they clambered into the train that would take them from Gosforn to Newcastle to say goodbye to their men. Lady Veronica travelled in First Class, of course. Evie nudged her mam. ‘There are advantages to being downstairs staff, at least we're all in this together.' Her mam raised a smile, and clutched Tim to her. He reached for the balls Millie was juggling. Evie had never been able to juggle, no matter how many times Jack had shown her, and she felt a shaft of jealousy that he had done the same for Millie.