Chaff upon the Wind (36 page)

As she drew closer, she glanced at Kitty and nodded briefly, but it was to Jack that she aimed her sly smile. ‘I’ve been baking and I thought you’d like a hot scone straight
out the oven.’

‘Plenty of butter, I hope, young Milly.’

‘Lashings of it, Jack. Just the way you like it.’ Provocatively, Milly ran her tongue round her lips.

Jack reached out and tickled Milly under her chin. ‘Oh you know what I like, don’t you, Milly?’

The girl bridled coyly but did not pull back. Kitty waited for the shaft of jealousy to strike through her but, to her amazement, it did not come. The only emotion she felt was a strange kind of
pity. Pity for Jack that he still could not resist flirting with any girl he met, and for Milly too, as she, like so many before her, began to fall under Threshing Jack’s spell.

‘Thanks, our Milly.’ Kitty dropped her rake and moved deliberately forward. ‘I’ve been wanting to see what a famous cook you’re becoming.’

Milly blinked and said, ‘Oh, I ain’t brought one for you, Kitty. ’Tain’t good for that skinny figure of yourn. Besides,’ she added, as if quickly trying to think up
an excuse, ‘Mrs Harding wants to see you.’

‘Mrs . . .? Oh, you mean Miss Miriam?’ She kept her gaze steadfastly on her sister and did not even glance at Jack. ‘Me? Why does she want to see me?’

Milly shrugged. ‘How should I know? She don’t confide in the kitchen staff. She’s here visiting her mother and saw you from the window.’ There was a pause, but Milly made
no move to take her there. ‘Well, are you going or not? She’s waiting.’

‘I can’t go into the house like this. I’m covered in chaff.’

Milly shrugged. ‘Please yourself. I’ll tell her I’ve given you the message.’

‘Oh, all right then.’

Kitty leaned the rake against the side of the drum, dusted herself down as best she could and let herself through the gate in the wall leading to the house.

Moments later, in Mrs Franklin’s sitting room, Miriam was saying, ‘Ah Kitty. I was wondering when I might have a chance to see you.’

So, thought Kitty shrewdly, she had not asked specifically for her at this moment. That had been Milly’s devious ploy. She wondered why and what lay behind it.

Miriam was moving towards the chair where her coat lay and feeling in the pockets. ‘I have a letter for you here somewhere. Now where did I put it?’

‘A letter, miss? For me?’

‘Mm. From Teddy – Master Edward,’ Miriam corrected herself, knowing nothing of the fact that Teddy was the name he insisted Kitty should call him when no one else could
hear.

‘Ah – here we are. It’s a week old, I’m afraid. I am sorry. I meant to get it to you earlier, but I’ve been so busy, so caught up in plans.’

She held the folded letter out to Kitty. ‘He sent it in one to me. He didn’t want to cause embarrassment to you by sending it to you direct.’

Kitty took the single sheet of paper between her fingers. ‘Thank you, miss.’

‘If you want to write back, Kitty, and I hope you will for it’s dreadful out there for all our boys, I can send it with my next letter, though after that I don’t expect to be
here.’

Kitty’s eyes widened. ‘Not here, miss? But where are you going? Oh no,’ she breathed, suddenly afraid. ‘Oh no, miss, not back to London. You wouldn’t. . .
.?’

Miriam was shaking her head, her lips pressed together as if to stop them trembling. ‘No, Kitty. I wouldn’t be so foolish as to get caught up in all that again, even though I still
have great sympathy for the Cause. Besides . . .’ She moved about the room, touching an ornament, a book lying open on a small table. There was an air of restlessness about her, a tension.
Kitty watched her. ‘Besides, the suffragettes are suspending all their activities while the war’s on, you know.’

‘No, miss. I didn’t know. I – I don’t really follow what’s happening with – with all that.’

‘No,’ Miriam glanced at her and then away again. ‘No, I don’t suppose you do.’ There was a pause and then she added, her voice slightly higher pitched, ‘Miss
Pankhurst, Miss Sylvia Pankhurst sent me such a kind letter of condolence, you know.’

‘Did she, miss?’

‘Yes, yes, she did. But it didn’t help. It – it couldn’t bring him back, could it?’

Quietly, Kitty said, ‘No, miss.’

Miriam was moving around the room again, her hands clasped in front of her. ‘Kitty, I’ve got to do something. I can’t stay here just playing at being the mistress of the Hall.
I’ve volunteered to become a VAD nurse. That’s why I’ve come today. To tell my mother that I’m going to train as a nurse and go out to the Front. Oh Kitty . . .’ She
whirled around and now her eyes were shining with some of their old fire. ‘Why don’t you come with me?’ She rushed across the room and grabbed Kitty’s hands in her own.
‘Oh please, Kitty, come with me. Think of all the good we could do, the two of us.’

‘I can’t, miss. For some things I wish I could, but I really can’t. I can’t leave him . . .’

Miriam released Kitty’s hands as if they had stung her. ‘Him?’ Now her voice was almost hysterical. ‘Him? Jack Thorndyke? You won’t leave him?’

But Kitty was shaking her head and her answer shocked even her as the words left her lips. ‘No, miss. I don’t mean Jack. It’s Johnnie I can’t leave. Little
Johnnie.’

Miriam stared at her for a long moment, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly open. Suddenly a fleeting pain showed deep in her eyes and then she swallowed as if there was a great lump in her
throat. ‘Of course.’ Her voice was husky. ‘I was forgetting. Of course you can’t leave – your son.’

The letter from Edward was friendly and said nothing that could not be shown to anyone. Nevertheless, Kitty kept its arrival a secret from Jack. And to do so, it was necessary
for her to destroy it, for there was no place where he might not, some day, find it.

But it didn’t matter, she told herself, for by the time she dropped it into the glowing coals of the range, she knew the letter by heart.

His words had escaped the censor’s pencil for in themselves they said nothing, but to Kitty, who knew exactly what those last few words really meant, they told her everything. At fourteen,
poor Master Edward had been suffering the life of an invalid and he was telling her that even that life would be preferable to the one he was now leading.

He was telling her that where he was at this moment was hell on earth.

‘Oh Teddy, Teddy,’ she whispered into the flickering flame. ‘Come home safely.’

And now, too, there was Miss Miriam to worry about.

‘What will that silly girl do next?’ Mrs Grundy ranted, slamming down the rolling pin so hard on the pastry she was rolling out that, sitting at the opposite end of
the table, Kitty felt the vibration. ‘Madam’s sick with fear. First Master Edward, who she’s convinced will never come back, and now Miss Miriam fancies herself soothing the
fevered brow and bandaging handsome soldiers.’

‘I don’t think Miss Miriam has any illusions, Mrs G.,’ Kitty said quietly. ‘I think she’s heard enough from T— . . . Master Edward’s letters to realize
what it must be like out there.’

The back door was flung open and crashed back against the wall, then they heard his stride and he was standing in the kitchen doorway. Kitty rose quickly to her feet. ‘I’m coming,
Jack. I was just—’

‘Do you know who’s responsible for this?’ His voice boomed and his face was thunderous.

‘Responsible? For – for what?’

‘You.’ He jabbed his finger towards the cook. ‘Is it you, or one of your silly kitchen maids?’

Mrs Grundy puffed out her chest in indignation. ‘Ya can stop ya ranting in my kitchen, Jack Thorndyke. Sit down and have a cup of tea and tell us what’s biting ya.’

‘Sit down? Sit down, you say? I’ve a good mind never to set foot in this place again. Aye, an’ I’ve a mind to tek me threshing tackle and leave his stacks to
rot.’

Mrs Grundy and Kitty exchanged a stricken glance. ‘Jack, what—?’ Kitty began but Jack took a step towards her and opened his clenched fist. On his palm, curling innocently, lay
a white feather.

‘This. This was on me engine.’

Mrs Grundy gasped and Kitty stared at the pretty thing lying in his strong hand. But its meaning was not pretty.

‘Who,’ he thundered, ‘put it there?’

‘Jack, maybe no one put it there,’ Kitty tried to calm him. ‘There’s feathers blowing all around the yard. Mebbe it just blew on to your engine.’

Jack spoke slowly and deliberately through clenched teeth. ‘It was fastened to the wheel. Tied on with a bit of straw. That’s no accident.’

To this Kitty could make no reply.

Mrs Grundy seemed to recover first. ‘Tek no notice, Jack.’

‘I bet it’s one of the farmhands,’ he growled. ‘They’re leaving in droves. I’ll have no one left except Ben and women and bairns to work the tackle
soon.’ He flung the feather to the floor, turned and strode outside again.

‘I’d better go and help, Mrs G.’

‘Aye, lass, you go. Bring the lad in here, I’ll keep an eye on him. Looks like you’re going to have ya hands full with ’im.’ She nodded her head towards the
departing figure of Jack striding away down the garden path.

He worked himself like a maniac and, like a tyrant, he drove the few workers left until they were almost dropping with exhaustion.

Kitty, still with the worst job of all at the chaff hole, worked doggedly until her hair was clogged with dust, her throat parched and her eyes stinging and watering from the dust and with
tiredness too. But still she worked on, uttering no word of complaint. Jack was like a man possessed, flinging coal into the fire box, pouring gallons of water into the tender. Poor
Sylvie
had never worked so hard in her life.

‘Ya’ll have yon belt breaking,’ Ben nodded towards the governor belt, ‘if you drive ’er too hard.’

Jack, climbing to the top of the drum to help feed in the crop, merely glowered at his workmate. Shaking his head, Ben calmly carried on working at his own pace, steadfastly refusing to have his
rhythm disturbed by Jack’s temper.

But in the end it was Ben, big, quiet Ben Holden, who at last threw down his pitchfork and climbed down from the top of the drum. ‘I’m doing no more work today, Jack. I’m fair
done in and if I work another minute, I’ll be toppling into yon drum along o’ the sheaves. Call it a day, man. We’re all fit to drop and as for young Kitty there, why, I
don’t know how that lass is still standing upright.’

‘You mind ya own business, Ben,’ Jack growled, ‘where she’s concerned and leave me to mind mine.’

The two men glared at each other, standing only a foot apart, yet Ben thrust his face even closer. He was perhaps the only one there who could match Jack Thorndyke in physical strength.
‘Well, if that’s ya attitude, Jack, I’ll be away to me home and me family and come the morning, I’ll be going into the town to volunteer.’

‘What? Don’t be a fool, man. There’s no need for you to go.’

‘No, there’s no need. I know that, Jack. But there’s a need within me. I’ve been feeling it. Me, a big strong chap, staying safely at home while others not ’alf as
strong have gone to fight for their country. And I’ve no wish to find a white feather tied to me pitchfork one morning.’

There was silence around them now, for all the workers had downed their tools and were listening to the exchange between the two men.

Jack reached out and grasped the front of Ben’s jacket, but the big man caught hold of Jack’s wrist and they stood, locked together, neither giving way, just glaring at each
other.

‘Did you – put that – that
thing
on my wheel?’

‘No, Jack, I didn’t. You should know me better than that after all the years we’ve worked together. Nor do I know who did. But the way you’re so upset about it, it must
have struck a chord of guilt somewhere in you, now mun’t it?’

Jack let out an angry curse and flung the man away from him. ‘Go then. Go, and good riddance. I don’t need you.’ He flung his arm out to encompass all of them standing around.
‘I don’t need any of you.’

He turned and strode away, disappearing into the gathering dusk while the other workers dispersed, muttering among themselves.

‘I’m sorry, lass,’ Ben said. ‘I didn’t mean it to happen like this. I was going to tell him, all quiet like, get him to see how I feel, but with this feather
business . . .’

Kitty laid her hand on the big man’s arm. ‘I know, Ben, I know. But I wish you weren’t going.’

‘Aye well,’ he said, his big shoulders drooping suddenly. ‘I feel it’s me duty.’

Kitty smoothed back the hair from her damp forehead. ‘I must go and get Johnnie and go home. Take care of yourself, Ben.’

It seemed as if they were the words she was saying far too often these days. First to Edward, then to Ben, and now here she was standing awkwardly beside Miss Miriam on the
station platform, waiting for the train that would take her to London to become a VAD nurse.

‘Do take care of yourself, Miss Miriam.’

Miriam smiled thinly and her voice was husky as she said, ‘I only wish you were coming with me, Kitty . . .’ adding so softly that Kitty hardly heard the words, ‘this
time.’

They were both remembering the last time they had stood on this platform.

More strongly, Miriam said, ‘And you take care of yourself. You’re looking dreadfully tired these days, Kitty. And I’m sure you’ve lost weight.’

‘It’s just the work, miss. With all the fellers going off to the war . . .’ She did not need to say any more for Miriam nodded.

‘I know. But look after yourself and – and Johnnie.’

It was the first time Kitty could remember Miriam saying her son’s name, actually voicing his name aloud.