Читать книгу The Land Girl - Allie Burns - Страница 10

July 1915

Dearest Emily,

I am moving up the queue and it will soon be my turn for leave. I ought to go to Yorkshire to see my mother, but I wonder could you meet me at King’s Cross station when I break my journey and pick up the train for Wakefield? I keep the photograph you sent me in my pocket, and look at you before I sleep – often you’re illuminated by shell light. But I long to see that determined chin for myself, your lively, mischievous eyes alight on me in person, my love.

What do you say?

Fondest wishes

Theo

‘You and John have had a lot of clandestine meetings in the library.’ She probed Cecil two days later under the shade of the monkey puzzle tree on the lawn, the brim of her sun hat low. Cecil lounged out on the other side of the trunk, reading, as usual. The soporific heat pushed her eyelids shut. ‘I waited up for you both last night but in the end I had to go to bed.’

‘We were playing chess.’ Cecil’s tone was falsely flippant. He was no more going to let her in on what was going on than Mother.

‘And who won?’ she asked.

‘I’d like to think I thrashed him, but I think he let me win.’

‘He always lets you win.’ She chuckled. ‘Has he ever beaten you or I at anything?’

Cecil reflected for a moment and then groaned. ‘All that effort to try and outwit him and all for nothing,’ he said banging his book against his thighs.

She hadn’t written back to Theo in the end. It would be difficult for her to travel to London without a chaperone. And after the conversation she’d overheard when Grandmother was visiting, it seemed she might need to a find herself an officer, not a corporal.

Her gardening journal slid from her grasp and her lap, but her hand was too heavy to move and catch the book. The buzzing of the bees and the collared dove in the canopy above all faded away …

She woke much later with a start, heavy still with sleep. A car door had slammed shut, footsteps on the gravel.

No one had mentioned that they were expecting guests.

Cecil had gone. She carried on where she had left off with her journal for the vegetable garden, planning which new crops she would plant and where. She hated afternoon tea and polite conversation with strangers, but it was nearing the end of John’s leave and there was no telling when he might next be back.

Now that the stinging heat of the sun had faded it was safe to emerge from the shade and cross the lawn to the borders she had helped Mr Flitwick to plant. Taking the secateurs from her pocket, she snipped the stems of some cosmos for Mother.

Declining Daisy’s offer of help, she placed the blooms into a vase in the kitchen and made her way through to the sitting room so she could casually drop by and determine whether the guest was someone she wanted to stay for.

‘Hello …’ She stopped on the threshold to assess the scene of John and Cecil flanking Mother, who perched on the edge of the sofa, wringing a lace handkerchief with her fingers.

A man with his back to her in the armchair by the door turned to face her. Her hand froze around the vase as she placed it on the bookcase. The man was the ghost of her father yet greyer, sterner, leaner. In a smarter, tailored suit, with neater hair. Altogether more groomed than her father, Baden.

The man held out his manicured hand to Emily.

‘I’m your Uncle Wilfred,’ he said. ‘Your father’s brother.’

‘How do you do,’ she said. Her mother and brothers’ faces were a mask of blank politeness, betraying no clue as to what she should think of this unexpected visit.

‘I’ve come to see your family to talk business.’

So, this must be what she’d overheard them talking about. Why had they excluded her from that?

‘You didn’t speak to my father for years, did you?’ she asked. John shook his head at her for being so frank. He was clearly intent on making a good impression.

‘No,’ Wilfred said. ‘Twenty-five years to be precise. And …’ he pointed a finger at her ‘… don’t forget – he didn’t speak to me either. I regret the whole business terribly.’

It’s a little late now, she wanted to say, but the anguished smile pinned to Mother’s face stopped her short. ‘We used to come to your house in London,’ she remembered, ‘without Father.’

‘A long time ago now. Cecil was just a baby the last time we visited,’ Mother said.

‘Yes. It was a shame you couldn’t come again. Well, if you wouldn’t mind excusing us …’

‘I’ll come too,’ Mother said, her hands twisting and turning again.

‘It’s fine, Mother. Leave it to us,’ John said.

Cecil ambled out of the room and down the hallway whistling to himself.

‘What have I said to you about wearing those boots indoors!’ Mother snapped once the men were out of earshot.

Mother stared at her hands while the conversation took place on the other side of the wall. After a while, Emily realised Mother’s hands were trembling and that she was trying to still them. Within ten minutes voices rose in the room next door. Mother joined them then, and then Cecil, and the conversation continued for a while longer. Emily hovered outside the door, hoping to overhear something, but the voices were quiet.

She sat in her bedroom, the door open. She would demand to be told what was going on. It was ridiculous to exclude her in this way as if she was nothing more than a child.

Voices, sharper now they were out of the library, travelled up from the hallway. She scampered down the stairs, but before she could join the others on the front step, Wilfred’s car was already approaching the cedar avenue.

Mother marched straight back into the sitting room and poured herself a brandy, which she swallowed down in one.

‘Whatever is going on?’ Emily asked. ‘Is he giving us money?’

Mother set her glass back down on the table as if Emily hadn’t spoken.

‘Mother.’ John appeared in the doorway. ‘We need to talk.’

‘Of course,’ Mother said. She followed John into the library, leaving her once again on the wrong side of the door.