Читать книгу The Willow Pool - Elizabeth Elgin - Страница 8

Meg was surprised and pleased to find Polly Kenworthy waiting at the bus stop.

‘How did you know when I’d be getting here?’ she beamed.

‘I didn’t. I was posting a parcel to Davie and Mrs Potter asked me if the young lady had managed to find Candlefold – about the job, she meant – and I told her you had. And that you’d be coming today. The bus was about due, so I hung around just in case.’

‘Did you think I wouldn’t come?’

‘I hoped you would. My bike is outside the post office. We can put your case on the seat – save you carrying it.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Meg said slowly, remembering how her mother had spoken, feeling that now was her chance to knock the edges off her Liverpool accent; talk proper, like Ma had done.

‘So how often do you write to your young man,’ Meg asked as they walked.

‘Every day. Sometimes more than that – even if it’s only I love you and miss you – oh, you know what it’s like when you’d give anything to be with them for just a couple of minutes.’

‘No. I don’t. There’s someone I write to; he’s in the Merchant Navy. He’d like us to go steady – even said he’d buy me a ring in Sydney, but I hope he won’t. I – I’m not ready to be in love with anybody yet.’

‘Not ready, Meg? But falling in love just happens, whether you’re ready for it or not! You see a man and that’s it! The minute I laid eyes on Davie everything went boing! inside me. He’s in Mark’s regiment – Mark is my brother, did I tell you? – and he got a crafty thirty-six-hour pass and brought Davie along. They were walking across the courtyard, Mark said something, and Davie threw back his head and laughed. That was the exact moment I fell in love with him. I didn’t know who he was and it never occurred to me to wonder if he had a girl or might even be married. He was the man I wanted; simple as that! And don’t tell me I’m too young to know my own mind, that I haven’t been around enough. I met Davie, so I don’t want to gad around now. I just want us to be married.’

‘And will you be, or must you wait till you’re twenty-one?’

‘Mummy would like me to wait. She agreed to our being engaged but she wants us to give it time, so we’re both sure. Mind, if Davie gets posted overseas she might let us get married on his embarkation leave, which wouldn’t be very satisfactory, really.’

‘See what you mean. It would be lovely bein’ married, but it might only be for a week.’

‘Yes. I’d be a lonely young wife for the rest of the war, probably. I wish I were twenty-one.’

‘How old are you, Polly?’

‘Twenty, almost.’

‘Ar. You’ll have to register when you’re twenty, for war work.’

‘Don’t I know it! If Davie and me were married, They couldn’t send me into the armed forces – only make me find a job. I’d like to stay at Candlefold. When I’m not helping in the house, I work in the kitchen garden, digging for victory, sort of. We grow a lot of vegetables and saladings and soft fruits – apples and pears too. Once, when fuel wasn’t rationed, we could heat the greenhouses and get early crops, but not any more.

‘When the Government took the brick house, they left us the kitchen garden, and the Home Farm, which Mrs Potter’s brother-in-law rents from us. I suppose it was a good thing really that They wanted the brick part of the house. It saves us heating it, because one bag of coal a week doesn’t go far, does it? Thank goodness we have the woods. We go scavenging if there’s been a gale, and bring in branches that have come down and saw them into logs. Every little helps.’

‘So what do we do here?’ They had come to the stile. ‘Shall I give you a lift over with the bike?’

‘No. We’ll carry on to the crossroads. A lane leads to the house from there. It’s a bit further to walk but it’s better than pushing the bike through the grass.’

‘Tell me, please.’ Meg decided it was time to sort out the way things were to be. ‘I’ve never worked as a servant before. In the shop, we had to call ladies madam and men sir. Is that what I call your mother? And do I call you Miss Polly?’

‘Good heavens, no! You’re not a servant, Meg. You’re a home help and we’re glad to have you! I’m Polly; Mummy is Mrs John, Gran is Mrs Kenworthy, so there’s no mixing them up. My real name is Mary, like Mummy’s, so I get called Polly, which I like. With two Marys and two Mrs Kenworthys, you’ll see what I mean. Oh, and there’s Nanny Boag!’

‘Boag!’ Meg gasped, remembering the lady on the photograph.

‘Mm. An unusual name, isn’t it? Scottish, I believe. She came to Gran when my pa was born, then stayed on, and when Mark and me arrived she was our nanny too. She’s part of the family really, when she remembers who she is. Mostly, these days, she’s in love with the Prince of Wales!’

‘But we haven’t got a Prince of Wales! He shoved off with Mrs Simpson.’

‘Nanny chooses to ignore that, poor thing. She was such a love. Now, she’s in a world of her own most times!’

‘And you go along with it?’

‘We-e-ll, she’s no trouble, really. You’ll soon get used to her ways.’

‘And Mrs Kenworthy?’

‘Darling Gran. She doesn’t have much of a time of it. You’ll be kind to her, won’t you, Meg? Often, especially when the weather is cold, she’s in pain; sometimes her hands are so bad she can’t hold a cup. She doesn’t complain, though, and she’ll be so pleased if you pop in from time to time, ask her if she’s comfy – maybe have a little chat. She hasn’t been downstairs for ages, poor love.’

‘Then wouldn’t it be better if she was?’ Meg reasoned. ‘When Ma got real bad, I made her a bed on the living-room sofa.’

‘We’ve thought about that, but someone would have to sleep downstairs, then, and there isn’t room. It’s one of the reasons we need you, Meg. Mummy gets tired sometimes.’

‘Then it’s a good job you’ll be getting an extra pair of feet,’ Meg smiled as they came into the courtyard from the far end. ‘And doesn’t the house look lovely, all covered in flowers?’ Her mother might once have stood at this very spot and felt as she did, Meg marvelled.

Ma? She sent out her thoughts as they passed the pump trough. Do you know I’m here?

There was no reply; she hadn’t really expected one. But a red rose that trailed over the doorway blew in the breeze as if it were nodding to her, telling her what she needed to know.

‘Here we are, then!’ Polly pushed open the door. ‘Welcome to Candlefold, Meg Blundell, and I do hope you’ll stay.’

‘I hope so too.’ Meg returned the smile, and contentment washed over her.

Oh, but she would! She had come home to Candlefold and to Ma, and no doubt about it, she was stoppin’!

‘So you’ve come, Meg!’ Mary Kenworthy – Mrs John – stood at the door, drying her hands. ‘I’m so glad. Be a dear, Polly; pop and tell Nanny I’ll be up in five minutes! She’s been ringing her bell for ages and I was determined not to answer it until I’d peeled the potatoes!’

‘OK,’ Polly sighed, disappearing.

‘Well, now that I’m here, peelin’ potatoes will be my job, and once I’ve met Nanny, I’ll run up and down when she rings. But should you be waitin’ on her, Mrs John? Why can’t she come down once in a while? Is she bad on her feet, or somethin’?’

‘No. It’s just her mind that’s sick – muddled. Nanny lives in the past, you see, and the nursery is her domain still. She sleeps in the night nursery and the day nursery is her sitting room. She insists the stairs are too much for her, but it could be because she doesn’t want to leave her rooms. Yet there must still be some semblance of reason in her head, because I think she’s unwilling to come downstairs in case the present catches up with her! She knows that Mark has joined the Army. She just wants to pretend she has children in the nursery still, and the war hasn’t happened. My husband was severely wounded in the last one – his abdomen and chest. He died when Polly was four. Nanny never forgave the Kaiser!’

‘So when this war started she decided to ignore it?’

‘She was already getting a little vague; when she found we were at war again it seemed to be the last straw. And when Mark left, that was it! She just lapsed into her long-ago world. She’s eighty, you know. Best we go along with her little moods, I suppose. She was so good to me when John died. I don’t know how I’d have pulled myself together if it hadn’t been for Nanny.’

‘But she rings her bell to call you like a servant, Mrs John – surely, that can’t be right?’

‘No, but understandable. She’s back in the days when we had a staff to run the house – we never called them servants, Meg – and she still thinks she’s only got to ring.’

‘Well, she won’t be ringing till she finds her bell,’ Polly grinned from the kitchen doorway. ‘I’ve hidden it behind the curtain. I’ll take you to meet her after lunch, Meg. You’ll learn to humour her. She’s no trouble really. If she gets a bit bossy you just walk away!’

‘But why do you have to put up with such a carry-on? I mean, she isn’t family.’

‘No, but she’s Nanny,’ Mary Kenworthy smiled gently, ‘which is pretty much the same thing. And she stayed with us through good times and bad. Almost family, Meg.’

‘Ar. I see,’ Meg nodded, though she didn’t see at all! That Nanny seemed a right old faggot! In the photograph she’d had a mouth on her like a steel trap! Nanny Boag and Master Mark her mother had written on the back of the picture of Polly’s brother in his christening gown.

But no one here knew about the photographs of Candlefold and no one would get to know until she was good and ready to tell them. Good-hearted though they were, and decent to a servant who’d got into trouble, Meg wanted to find out for herself how it had really been, and not be told kindly and gently about it by an embarrassed Mrs John. Because that was how it would be if ever she admitted being Dorothy Blundell’s daughter, and herself born at Candlefold!

‘By the way,’ Polly giggled, ‘Nanny is busy at the moment sticking pins into a newspaper picture of Mrs Simpson. I’ll leave her to it and take you up there, Meg, when she’s back to more normal, sort of. Seeing a strange face in her present mood might be a bit too much for her!’

‘Oooh! She isn’t a witch, is she? Sticking pins, I mean!’ Meg gasped.

‘Don’t worry, my dear. Nanny, even at her most troublesome, is no worse than a child having a fit of the sulks. I’m sure she doesn’t know the first thing about witchcraft, even though it’s supposed to be witch country around these parts! Now, shall Polly take you to your room, then show you round the house and what is left to us of the gardens and outbuildings? And the kitchen garden, of course. And when you do, Polly, can you ask Mr Potter if we can have a couple of spring cabbages?’

‘Potter? That’s the name of the lady at the post office, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. Our gardener is her husband. We are such a tiny community that everyone seems connected in some way or another. It’s Mrs Potter’s sister and her husband – Armitage – who rent Home Farm from us. Everybody knows everybody. And by the time you’ve had two weeks with us, Meg, you’ll know if you want to be a part of it or not. There are no picture houses or dance halls in Nether Barton. Only hops, sometimes, in the parish hall. Will you miss things like that?’

She said it anxiously, Meg thought, as if to think that her home help might leave at the end of the fortnight troubled her.

‘I might, Mrs John, but I don’t think I will. After that bombing it’s safer here! And anyway, Ma and me always wanted to live in the country, so I hope I suit.’

‘I think you will. And by the way,’ Polly smiled at her mother, ‘is it omelettes for lunch? I can get some saladings from Potter if it is.’

‘Omelettes!’ Meg gasped. ‘You need eggs for them, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but we have our own hens, you see, and we’re very lucky to have our own cow too. A little Jersey. We keep her at Home Farm with the herd there, and Armitage milks her for us. So you can have plenty of milk on your porridge at breakfast, and an egg as well.

‘At night we have a big mug of Ovaltine – if we’ve been able to get any in the shops, that is – or milky cocoa. We sit round the table here, and call it our quiet time; think of the day ahead. We Kenworthys are optimists. Tomorrow is a day to look forward to, not the day that never comes! Are you an optimist, Meg Blundell?’

‘Yes, I am,’ she said firmly, because who in her right mind wouldn’t be an optimist in a house like this, with all the milk she could drink, and a fresh egg for breakfast?

The afternoon sun warmed the stones of the old house to honey, and bees buzzed around roses and clematis that climbed the walls and peeped into upstairs windows.

‘I like this bit of Candlefold best.’ Polly waved an embracing hand. ‘Oh, the newer, red-brick part of the house is very elegant, but this old greystone bit is solid and safe, somehow. The walls are two feet thick, which makes it cooler in summer and warmer in winter. The very first Kenworthy built this in 1320; look over the door, you can still make out the date. It was chiselled there when a yeoman farmer brought his bride here and fathered eight children on her, though only two lived.

‘Children died in medieval times. I suppose my early ancestors thought themselves lucky to rear two sons to manhood. The elder took the farm, as it was then; the younger went to London to seek his fortune, so maybe there is another line of Kenworthys running parallel to ours. Fortunately, the one who lived here was taught to read and write by the monks at the abbey, so he could count his money, and read his Bible – in Latin, of course!’

‘And I bet he gave plenty to the Church, an’ all!’ Meg remembered from history lessons at school how large the Church had loomed in long-ago England.

‘Yes. Mummy says they gave their tithe, always – a tenth of all the crops they grew and a fair bit of the cash in hand, so to speak. I don’t know when our lot stopped being Catholics. A lot of the families around this part of Lancashire never gave up the old religion – held secret Masses. But it seems the sixteenth-century Kenworthys thought it politic to be Anglo-Catholic. It’s common knowledge they sat on the fence during the Civil War too, paying lip service to Cromwell, yet all the time helping royalists or hiding them if they were on the run from Roundhead soldiers! I suppose we got very good at surviving; that’s why we’re still here!’

There had been a Kenworthy at Waterloo and one fought in the Crimea. ‘Our lot have lived here for six hundred years, Meg. No one else but a direct-line Kenworthy. God, wouldn’t it be awful if something happened and the line ended? Hell! I hate wars!’

Tears filled her eyes and Meg was in no doubt she was thinking of Davie, and thought herself lucky she wasn’t in love – not properly in love – with Kip Lewis. Loving someone so desperately took over your whole life; she knew that already from the way Polly went from smiles to tears in seconds. Mind, Polly Kenworthy was lucky knowing who she was, Meg had to admit; knew all about her ancestors way back to 1320, whilst Margaret Mary Blundell didn’t even know her grandparents, nor even who had fathered her. Polly was twice lucky because she had background and a pedigree.

It was all because of Candlefold, which wasn’t just a very old house, but a way of life. Candlefold had become Ma’s happy place because before she had come here to work, the life she’d led hadn’t been worth mentioning. Where Ma was born and reared Meg would never know now; sufficient only to accept that Ma’s life began here, as a fourteen-year-old girl sent into domestic service.

Small wonder Dolly Blundell had loved the place, and the kindness and happiness and the belonging; no prizes for guessing where Ma had blossomed into a pretty girl who laughed a lot, for hadn’t she always been laughing or smiling on those photographs?

Who were you, Ma? Who am I? And why does this house have a hold over you and me? Why did you tell me with your thoughts that I must come here?

‘Hey! A penny for them! I asked if you’d like to see the other part of the house, but you were miles away.’

‘I was thinkin’ that you know so much about your family and I know nuthink at all about mine.’

‘But you must know something – your mother and father and your grandparents – unless you were a foundling.’

‘What’s a foundling?’ Meg scowled, sorry she had said what she had.

‘An orphan of the storm, an abandoned child …’

‘Well, I wasn’t! You know I had a mother! But I never knew my father. He was a seaman and died at sea of plague, or something. Anyway, they sewed his body in sailcloth and weighted it and buried him at sea. That’s all I know. Never knew my grandparents’

She told stinking lies too. Her father dying at sea, indeed! Mind, if he had, that was the way he’d have gone, because Kip once told her that was how it was. One of Kip’s crew had died of yellow fever and they’d got him overboard pretty quick, he’d said, so it wouldn’t spread.

‘I never knew my grandpa; can hardly remember my father either. Sometimes bits come back, but they are very hazy. But I’ve got a gran, and you can share her with me, Meg. So are we going to have a look at the brick house, then?’

‘Won’t we get into trouble? Won’t there be guards?’

‘Not a bod in sight. Oh, someone comes about once a month to check the place over, and sometimes a van arrives and things are taken in. Mummy says she thinks that either documents or records or works of art are stored there. Well, they couldn’t leave all the stuff in London for the Luftwaffe to bomb, could they? Museums and art galleries were emptied as soon as war started, don’t forget. Maybe some of it is here, snug and safe – who knows?’

‘But don’t you care, Polly, about them nicking your house?’

‘No! Why should I? All I care about is that this war is over as soon as maybe, and that Davie and Mark will come through it safely – and all the servicemen and women. Wars are wrong and stupid. Look what happened to my father. His war wounds slowly killed him!’ Tears came once more, and Meg knew she was thinking about Davie again.

‘Ar hey, girl! Nuthink’s going to happen to your feller! How could it, when he’s never out of your thoughts? And your brother’s goin’ to be all right too, so how about you and me doin’ a tour of the place? Then you can take me to meet your gran, eh?’

‘Yes, of course!’ Polly pulled her hand across her eyes. ‘And Nanny too.’

‘Y-yes …’ Daft old Nanny, who lived in a pretend world and stuck pins in pictures and had tantrums you walked away from. No harm in her at all! Childlike, Mrs John said. So why, all at once, did Meg not want to visit the nursery? Why did just thinking about it make her uneasy, even though she would be meeting an old lady who had brought up two generations of Kenworthys and who Polly obviously loved; Mrs John too! Why should she feel peculiar about meeting someone she had only before seen on a photograph as a nanny in long skirts, a baby boy in her arms?

She did not know what gave her the creepy feeling. Sufficient to say she would know soon enough if her fears held substance. This very afternoon, in fact, when they climbed the stairs to the nursery.

The wide, cushioned windowsill in her bedroom made a comfortable seat and Meg sat, arms around knees, looking out over fields and trees to the distant evening sky. It was past ten and the light was beginning to fade, blurring the outlines of trees and hedges, rounding them with mist. Twilight here was gentler than at Tippet’s Yard, where the fading of the light made outlines of buildings sharp and dark against the skyline. Here at Candlefold a bird sang to warn against the ending of the day, and all about was soft and hushed.

The white-painted walls of the room reflected the light from the window and softened into palest apricot; over the weathercock atop the stables, the first star appeared, low in the sky. Did you wish on first stars? Starlight star bright, first star I’ve seen tonight … Did you close your eyes and cross your fingers and wish to stay here for ever and sleep always in this blue-flowered room?

Meg closed her eyes to call back the day that had been: she and Polly pushing through a gap in the hedge and into the garden of the house the faceless ones had taken, to gaze at its shuttered windows, neglected lawns, the broad sweep of weed-choked steps. She had seen it all before in a photograph. … 1916. Garden Party … wounded soldiers. The tussocked grass was fine-trimmed then, and roses that ran wild over the front of the house were once trained into obedience. Afterwards, they had climbed the stairs to the nursery.

‘Can I come in? Polly pushed open the door. ‘I’ve brought someone to see you.’

Nanny Boag in a rocking chair, knitted slippers on her feet. She wore a printed cotton dress, and an embroidered pinafore tied at the waist. She looked younger than the long-skirted, black-bonneted lady in the photograph. Her cheeks were plump, her eyes wide as she turned eagerly.

‘Polly, dear! How nice of you to bring your little friend! What is your name, child?’

‘Meg.’

‘Meg who? Cat got your tongue? Did your nanny bring you? Where is she?’

‘In the kitchen, talking to Cook,’ Polly hastened, pink-cheeked.

‘Doesn’t Nanny get a kiss then, or have we forgotten our manners?’ The elderly woman offered her cheek; dutifully Polly kissed it.

‘Were you having a little sleep? Did we wake you? Shall we come back later?’

‘Sleep? Goodness me, no! Nanny hasn’t time to sleep! I was just thinking about Scotland and all the packing to be done! August already, and the year flown by! Go and play with your friend, dear, and don’t get into mischief! And put your bonnet on, or you’ll get freckles! Close the door quietly!’

Her eyelids drooped, her chin fell on her chest.

‘Heaven help us! What’s to do with the old girl?’ Meg gasped as they tiptoed away. ‘August? Goin’ to Scotland? It’s May!’

‘We stopped going to Scotland before Pa died. We used always to go in August, I believe.’

‘So we are both little girls, and my nanny is talking to Cook – only there isn’t a cook!’

‘Not any more.’

‘I thought she’d be – well – sterner.’

‘She was once. Now she seems to have got smaller and more frail.’

‘And if I take her tea up tomorrow, will she remember me?’

‘I doubt it,’ Polly smiled. ‘I’ll introduce you again, in the morning.’

Childlike, Meg frowned. Frail? Oh, she might be that, but her eyes had been sharp and beady; had taken in every detail of Polly’s little friend.

They had met Polly’s mother then, closing the door of Mrs Kenworthy’s room, a finger to her lips.

‘Mother-in-law is sleeping. Perhaps you could look in on her later?’

Meg picked up the tray from the floor outside the door, asking if there was anything she could do. ‘I came to help, Mrs John, and I’ve hardly done a thing.’

‘Then you can make tea. Use the small pot. We’ll count today as your settling-in day. And when we’ve had tea, will you go with Polly to feed the hens and collect the eggs? I could do with a few for a baked custard for supper.’

‘It isn’t right your mother should work so hard,’ Meg protested as they crossed the courtyard, making for the henhouse. ‘I mean – she once had people to do the housework for her, and a cook, an’ all! Now, she’s got your gran and Nanny Boag to worry about, as well as the war and food rationing. And she’s such a lovely lady.’

‘She is, Meg. I adore her. And things will get easier once you’re into the swing of it. By the way, hens drink a lot of water when they are in the lay; could you fill a bucket at the pump whilst I get the feed?’

There was an iron pump at the trough. Meg lifted the handle up and down; water splashed into the bucket.

‘Ma?’ she whispered, thinking how it had once been for Dorothy Blundell and how her life had ended in the cold and dark of a mucky yard. ‘Oh, Ma.’ She sucked in her breath sharply, then arranged her mouth into a smile as Polly waved from the far archway. ‘Coming!’ she called.

Twelve fat brown hens had run to greet them; drank long at the water trough, then pecked up the wheat Polly threw, feathered bottoms bobbing as they scratched.

‘Oh, they’re lovely!’

‘Don’t get fond of them, Meg. They aren’t pets! Would you like to collect the eggs?’

Collecting eight brown eggs, Meg thought, had been just about the nicest, most countrified thing she had ever done. She had laid them carefully in the empty feed bucket, then placed them in the wooden egg rack in the pantry.

Mind, meeting Polly’s gran had been something altogether different. It might even, Meg thought as she watched big black birds settling in the far trees, have been a disaster, but for the lies. More lies!

‘Meg Blundell, is it?’ asked the old lady whose gnarled hands rested unmoving on the counterpane. ‘How strange. We once had a housemaid called Blundell – Dorothy, her name was. Would you perhaps know of her?’

Her eyes were troubled as she said it, Meg thought, a look of apprehension in them, as if she had needed the stranger who stood at her bedside to deny it.

‘Dorothy? Oh no. Ma was called Hilda.’ Clever of her to have it all worked out – just in case! ‘An’ she wasn’t never a servant; worked in a tobacco factory. She died three months ago.’

‘Ah, yes.’ A small smile – almost of relief, Meg thought – moved the comers of Mrs Kenworthy’s mouth. ‘Just that the name brought it back …’

‘Blundell’s a common enough name around where I was born,’ Meg was quick to answer. ‘There’s even districts of Liverpool with Blundell in them. And me da died at sea,’ she added, to take care of the nameless scallywag. How glib a liar she was becoming – she who’d always prided herself in telling the truth and shaming the devil!

‘I’m very glad to meet you, Meg Blundell, for all that.’

‘And I’m very glad to meet you, Mrs Kenworthy.’ Meg took the offered hand carefully in her own, knowing that hands so swollen hurt a great deal and must not be shaken. ‘And I’m glad I’ve come here to work. It’s so beautiful. You can’t imagine how different it is from Liverpool.’

‘Where, in Liverpool?’

‘Lyra Street.’ And that took care of Tippet’s Yard, Meg thought as she offered the road where Kip’s sister lived. ‘A lot of houses got bombed around there, but I was lucky.’

‘Poor Liverpool,’ the old lady sighed. ‘We had relatives there once. One of them – a cousin – died without issue and left some of his property to my son. John, that is; Polly’s pa. But he got rid of it very quickly; sold it off. I don’t think it brought a lot at auction …’

Sold? But he’d given one – as near as dammit, that was – to her ma, hadn’t he? But for all that, ‘Ar,’ was all she said, because it was best Mrs Kenworthy shouldn’t be reminded about a place called Tippet’s Yard, or about the name signed beside that of Dorothy Blundell. She wouldn’t learn the truth by admitting whose daughter she was, because people like the Kenworthys wouldn’t tell it to her if they thought it would be hurtful. Their sort never did things that hurt.

‘Do you want us to stay for a while, Gran?’

So they talked about Davie, and how many more days it would be until he came on long leave, and Mark too. And Meg told of the thrill of collecting eggs and how lovely it was to live at Candlefold and how awful that That Lot in London could just take your house!

‘But it might have been worse, Meg. We could have had an army unit who would be marching up and down all the time, and sergeants shouting orders and men doing target practice! And those people could have thrown us out completely, don’t forget! I’m grateful they let us keep this old part, and the kitchen garden and the acres. At least we are still here. One caring owner, as they say, for six hundred years. At least we’ve been able to hold on, unbroken. And I’m slipping down in bed! Could you prop me up again – save Mary having to do it?’

So one either side of the high single bed, Polly and Meg lifted her gently, placing pillows at her back and beneath each arm for support.

‘Thank you.’ Mrs Kenworthy opened her eyes. She had closed them in anticipation of pain to come, and there had been none. ‘That’s much better. Awful of me to be so helpless …’

‘No it isn’t,’ Meg defended. ‘An’ I’m used to lifting ’cause Ma was sick for a long time with TB – and I didn’t take it,’ she supplied to save any bother. ‘I’ll come up again – see if you want anything doin’, Mrs Kenworthy.’

She had taken a liking straight away to the woman who lay so still in the lace-covered, old-fashioned bed. So softly spoken, and thanking them gratefully for comfying her in bed. Not like the old girl up the stairs, and her able to walk about and do things for herself had she wanted to! And ringing her bell to summon a long-ago housemaid to do her skivvying!

Had she once, Meg thought now, as the distant trees began to fade into the night, rung her bell and had Dorothy Blundell hurried up the stairs to do the nanny’s bidding? Had Ma carried up nursery meals when the baby in the christening gown was growing up? Mind, Ma wouldn’t have known Polly who, Meg calculated, must have been born after she left. Ma’s replacement would have answered the ringing then!

Poor Ma. Did she leave Candlefold in tears, even though they had cared for her and put a roof over her head? Had she turned for just one last look? And had she longed, even as she left, for the man who was the cause of it all to make an honest woman of her?

Well, Ma had managed without him, Meg thought defiantly. In spite of the shame and having to wear a cheap wedding ring, Ma had kept her end up till she caught TB from a woman she helped nurse, Nell said; probably when she had washed her and laid her out and got her ready for the undertaker. Ma needn’t have died if she hadn’t had to do things like that.

Yet she came up trumps in the end, God love her! Ma it had been who’d enticed her to this place where there were eggs for breakfast and fields and trees and flowers and kindness. And Dorothy Blundell’s daughter was stoppin’ here, no matter how many lies she told! And what was more, she would keep her mouth shut until she found out what she wanted to know and was good and ready to tell them who she really was. And where she had been born!

‘Come in,’ Meg answered the gentle tap on the door.

‘Thought you might be asleep …’

‘Nah, Polly. Been sittin’ at the window, thinking about today, watching it get dark. It’s like another world after Tip – after Lyra Street. Wasn’t I lucky, chancing on Mrs Potter?’ She swung her legs to the floor.

‘But we were lucky, too. Did you ever find the relations you were looking for, by the way?’

‘Weren’t any relations.’ My, but news travelled fast in Nether Barton! ‘Don’t know why I said that. As a matter of fact, I’d just got sick of Liverpool – the mess after the blitz, and so many killed, I mean – that I jumped on the first bus I saw and ended up here. Just a day away from it all, it was supposed to be.’

How many more lies?

‘And you saw the card in the post office window, and asked directions to Candlefold?’

‘Well, the store I worked in had been bombed. I needed a job and, like I said, Ma and me used to talk a lot about livin’ in the country. One day. There was this little place – all in our imagination, mind – with a garden where you didn’t get smuts all over the washing when you hung it out to dry. Only Ma didn’t make it.’ Her bottom lip trembled and she straightened it into a smile. ‘But I made it, Polly! And I’m sure Ma knows I did!’

‘And will you like it here?’

‘You bet I will!’

She would be stoppin’ till they threw her out or, come August, the Government told her to find war work. And she was moving on nowhere without a fight!

‘Mind if I stay and talk? I’ve been writing to Davie, and I always feel so lonely afterwards. Are you very tired, Meg?’

‘No. I’m all keyed up, ’s a matter of fact. Just can’t get over my luck, if you want to know. Been telling myself I’ll wake up in L-Lyra Street, and find it’s all been a dream. Let’s sit on the bed and talk?’

She closed the door; her door! It was giddy-making. Then she carefully folded back the valanced bedspread, kicked off her slippers and offered a pillow to Polly.

‘What’s them flowers called on the bedspread and curtains? They’re ever so bonny. You’ll have to teach me the names of flowers.’

‘Well, those particular ones are delphiniums. They once grew in the garden of the brick house – all shades of blue – but they’ve been overgrown. Potter says it’s going to take him for ever to lick it all into shape when he gets it back again; says Armitage ought to be allowed to take the reaper to the lawns. Says it’s the finest crop of hay he’s seen in a long time! Potter took it badly, losing the main garden, but like I pointed out to him, he had an undergardener then, and an apprentice. They were both called up into the Army, so he couldn’t have coped on his own.’

‘But you help in the kitchen garden? And feed the hens?’

‘And go to the farm for the milk. That’s the first thing I do, mornings. Then I wait for Mrs Potter and Davie’s letter.’

‘You spend your life waiting for letters, or writing them. How long since you saw your feller?’

‘Six weeks. He and Mark got a crafty forty-eight, as they call it – hours, I mean, not days!’

‘Your brother is a real good-looker, isn’t he?’ Meg called back a photograph she’d noticed in the drawing room of a soldier, a small smile on his lips and mischief in his eyes. ‘I’ll bet your Mark can get any girl he wants. Can he dance?’

‘Loves it. Davie, too. When he was last here we went to Preston to a dance, then hitched a lift back as far as Nether Barton. There was a moon, and we walked home the long way round – took us ages and ages.’ She sighed yearningly.

‘Mark wasn’t with you?’

‘No. He said he wasn’t playing gooseberry. He got into civvies as soon as he arrived and said he was going to have a lazy couple of days. Actually, he spent most of the time sawing logs and barrowing manure for Potter! D’you know, it’s lovely sitting here, chatting. Almost like having a sister!’

‘Mm. You’re a good bit younger than your brother, aren’t you?’

‘Four years. It took a bit of time to get me, I suppose. I’m adopted, actually.’

‘Adopted!’ Meg’s eyes opened wide. ‘B-but you don’t seem to mind about it.’

‘Why should I? I’ve known about it since I was old enough to be told. I actually remember when they told me – suppose it was such momentous news it stayed in my mind. Hand-picked, Mummy said I was. A little fair-haired girl.’

‘But aren’t you ever curious, Polly, about where you came from and who your mother is? And you are so like your brother it’s amazing!’

‘Mummy’s my mother. The one who had me is my other mother, but I don’t think about her – we-e-ll, hardly ever. They got me through an adoption society – hope it didn’t upset my natural mother too much, handing me over. A young girl who couldn’t keep me, I think it must have been. No one has ever told me.’

‘And don’t you wonder just a little bit who your father was?’ Meg demanded. ‘I’d want to know.’ By the heck, didn’t she just!

‘Why should I? As far as I’m concerned, the one I look on as my father died when I was little. I’m lucky, being adopted into all this, and I never forget it. After all, my other mother must have been unmarried, and you know what a rumpus that causes! Maybe she knew that the finger would have pointed at me too. Illegitimate babies always suffer, you know. I think that if ever I was to meet her, I’d tell her I was very happy, and thank her for being brave enough to give me up. It must have hurt her a lot.’

‘Oooh, Polly Kenworthy! You aren’t half cool about it. Doesn’t it bother you at all?’ Meg was still taken aback.

‘No. What bothers me is that my parents might have walked on to the next cot and decided on the baby in that one! Don’t you understand? I’m lucky being who I am and having a lovely family. Just think of it – I might never have met Davie. Now that would have been a tragedy! And I’ll tell you something, Meg. If ever I were in the same position – with Davie’s baby, I mean – I wouldn’t let anyone take it from me for adoption!’

‘And could you ever wonder if you might be pregnant?’ Imagine that happening to a Kenworthy, Meg thought wildly. ‘What I mean is – well, have you ever …?’

‘No. Have you?’

‘Heck, no! Mind, I’ve never wanted to, as a matter of fact.’

‘I have, Meg. Oh, we’ve done some pretty heavy petting and there have been times when I’ve thought, what the hell!, but either me or him have managed to count to ten in time!’

‘But what if it does happen? What’ll you do, then?’

‘Hope and pray and count! Oh heck, I’m hungry! Just to even think about me and Davie doing it always makes me want to eat. Shall we go downstairs for a glass of milk, and some bread and jam?’

‘Let’s! And shall we bring it back up here, eh?’

Laughing, they tiptoed to the kitchen.

It was a queer carry-on, Meg thought as she lay awake still, counting as the grandfather clock downstairs struck twice. Her and Polly eating jam and bread sitting crossed-legged on the bed; Polly telling her about the way it was, being in love and about being adopted. Funny, it hadn’t seemed to worry her, but she’d fallen on her feet, she admitted it! Maybe, if Ma had given her up for adoption, Meg frowned, she could have ended up at a place like this too. And even more peculiar was the fact that Polly could be so matter-of-fact about her natural father, though she’d had a long time to get used to being adopted. And who in her right mind would worry about an absent father when she’d ended up a Kenworthy? Meg sighed and turned over her pillow, closing her eyes, breathing deeply and slowly.

Her last thought, before sleep took her, was to wonder yet again which sneaky little sod had fathered her, then shoved off without a scrap of regret. But she would never know now the name of Father Unknown – and was it all that important when Polly was technically in the same boat, sort of. After all, a sneaky little sod must have fathered her too, yet it didn’t seem to bother her! So best she forget it and, like Polly, count her blessings!

Meg surveyed the drawing room she had just cleaned, sniffing the scent that was a mixing of beeswax polish and freshly picked flowers.

The drawing room had been in need of a good clean, come to think of it, but with two old ladies to fetch and carry for, and Polly working all the time she could spare in the kitchen garden, Mrs John had little time for cleaning and it would please her to see what the new home help had done to the white-walled, slate-floored, cosily-old room. Now mirrors and windows shone, woodwork gleamed. She had even polished the copper jugs before she’d crept into the forbidden garden of the brick house and gathered flowers with which to fill them. Smugly pleased with her work, she picked up the photograph of Mark Kenworthy, clucking with annoyance that any man that handsome should be heart-whole and fancy-free.

‘You like my brother, then?’ Polly smiled from the doorway. ‘And it’s drinkings-time in the kitchen. Mummy’s just made tea.’

‘Like him? He’s not a bad-looker, I’ll give you that!’ Hastily Meg replaced the likeness. ‘I don’t suppose you could blame any girl for falling for him.’

‘They do. In droves. Yet he just loves them and leaves them, even though he knows Mummy would like him to marry. After all, he’s twenty-four.’

‘Suppose your ma wants a grandson so the Kenworthys can carry on here. Why did you never grab him for yourself, Polly?’

‘Never gave it a thought – after all, he is my brother …’

‘Yes, but only by adoption, so him and you aren’t blood kin. Hadn’t you ever thought it would be lawful if you had fallen for him?’

‘N-no. All I ever wanted was for him to be my big brother. Falling in love with him never entered my head. And thank heaven it didn’t! Davie is the one I want!’

‘Can see what you mean. Reckon if you had fallen for him, there’d always have been a kind of – of – What’s the word I’m looking for?’

‘Incest?’ Polly raised a surprised eyebrow.

‘That’s it! Would’ve smacked of incest, wouldn’t it, in a roundabout way?’

‘It could have. But he seemed ages older than me when I was growing up. His friends treated me like a little girl – which I was, to them. And Mark always treated me as his kid sister, so the awful situation didn’t arise.’

‘You were waiting for Davie,’ Meg nodded, ‘though you didn’t know it.’

‘Waiting for Davie. It just about sums it up. Waiting for letters, for phone calls if he’s lucky enough to get through, waiting for his next leave; waiting to be twenty-one, then Mummy will know we aren’t going to change our minds about each other. One long wait …’

‘Ar, cheer up, queen! One of these days, when you’re least expectin’ him, he’ll be there on the doorstep!’

‘And if that happens, Meg, I wouldn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. You see, unexpected leave is often embarkation leave! But we’ll take the tea upstairs before we have our own. About time you met Nanny Boag – properly, I mean!’

‘Ar. Prop’ly.’ And hope, Meg thought, that the daft old girl had come back to earth again; hope she wasn’t still Polly’s little friend, whose nanny was in the kitchen gossiping with Candlefold’s cook!

‘Tea for upstairs.’ Mary Kenworthy was arranging cups and saucers on two small trays.

‘So sit yourself down, Mrs John. Me and Polly will take it. Don’t forget I haven’t met Nanny yet – not properly, that is.’

‘Well, she’s fine, today – or she was when I took her breakfast up. Mind, her mood changes can come on without warning, so fingers crossed.’

‘You take Gran’s first,’ Polly said as they crossed the great echoing hall, making for the stone arch in the corner of the room and the stone stairs that rose from it, ‘and I’ll take Nanny’s – prepare her for a surprise, and your second coming! Let’s hope she isn’t in – in –’

‘Cloud cuckoo land again,’ Meg grinned.

‘Fingers crossed!’ Polly smiled back, thinking yet again how lovely it was to have someone her own age about the place.

Nanny Boag had not been in cloud cuckoo land, and anyone, Meg thought as she sipped tea at the kitchen table, could have been forgiven for thinking she ever had!

‘Meg Blundell, is it?’ Emily Boag’s eyes had swept Meg from head to toes. ‘So why haven’t I met you before, miss? You arrived yesterday, at lunchtime. Where have you been until now?’

‘I – I – we-e-ll, we came, and –’

‘Yes! We came yesterday, but you were so busy planning the Scotland trip that Meg and I thought we’d better leave you to it!’ Polly had hastened.

‘Scotland, for goodness’ sake! We haven’t been to Scotland these twenty years past! What on earth are you thinking about, Polly Kenworthy? Is it your time of the month, or are you so head-in-the-clouds over your young man that you can’t think straight? But I’m glad you have come, Meg Blundell. Mrs John could do with some help. My, but I remember when there was a cook and kitchenmaid here, and two housemaids and a parlour maid as well as myself in the nursery. Things have changed since that man Hitler started the war! When it’s all over, I hope they hang him! Maybe, if we hadn’t been so gentlemanly with the Germans at the end of the last war things might have been very different. I shall never forgive the Kaiser for what happened to John. Such a good child; such a gentle young man. It wasn’t right to make a soldier of him, send him to the trenches!’

Shuddering, she had closed her eyes and hugged her cardigan round her, setting her chair rocking in agitation.

‘Oh, thump!’ Polly had gasped. ‘She’s pulled up the drawbridge again!’

For a moment the old woman sat, shoulders hunched. Then she’d opened her eyes, straightened her back and smiled fondly.

‘Off you go then, whilst I drink my tea! Take your little friend with you, Polly dear, and don’t forget to tell her nanny you are going out to play. And remember your bonnets!’

‘Wouldn’t you know it?’ Meg had whispered. ‘Back to square one again! Never mind! Third time lucky. Next time she sees me she might just remember I’m Meg! And don’t look so miserable. Give and take, eh? After all, the old girl doesn’t know she’s doing it!’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Polly had flung as they closed the door behind them. ‘Sure, I mean, that she doesn’t know she’s doing it!’

‘But you said, and your mother too, that you –’

‘That we have to humour her because she doesn’t know where she is or what time of the day it is, most times? Well, sometimes I’m not convinced! Sometimes I think she does know what she’s doing!’

‘But your mother said her mind has gone; that mostly she had shut the world out.’

‘Yes, but is she as senile as she’d have us believe, Meg? Sometimes I think it’s all an act and that she’s putting on Mummy’s good nature so she can still have people running after her like it was the old days! She’s got Mummy fooled and even I accept it, most of the time! But like you saw, she can be as bright as a button one minute, then just go back into her other world as the mood suits her!’ Her eyes had filled with tears and she’d shaken her head impatiently. ‘Oh, don’t take any notice of me! I’m in one of my miserable moods, I suppose, because there wasn’t a letter from Davie this morning! I always get fratchy if he doesn’t write and do peevish things like taking it out on Nanny – who really is senile!’

‘Like you said, Polly girl – sixpence short of a shilling. She can’t help it, I suppose, for wanting to put the clock back. I often wished I could have done the same after Ma died; wished I’d made her go to that sanatorium, charity ward or not!’

‘Meg! Please don’t upset yourself. We’re both of us getting in a tizzy, wishing we’d done something – or hadn’t done or said something. I shouldn’t have said things about Nanny, who can’t help being –’

‘Nutty as a fruitcake!’ Meg had sucked in a deep breath then forced her lips into a smile. ‘Cheer up, queen! There’ll be two letters tomorrow! There might even be a phone call tonight!’

‘Yes. And even if there isn’t, at least I’m young and fit and not in pain like Gran.’

‘Or daft as a brush like Nanny Boag. Now let’s get our tea. Then I think I’ll give the outside steps a good scrub!’

Stone steps leading to the thick, nail-studded door, worn into hollows by generations of Kenworthy feet. Safe and enduring, those steps, and four hundred years old.

Now, as she drank her tea, Meg wondered how many times Dolly Blundell had scrubbed them. It was a sobering thought.