Down an English Lane

Chapter One

‘M
aisie… Hey, Maisie Jackson, stop daydreaming and come and give us a hand with these sandwiches…’

Maisie glanced across the church hall towards her friend, Audrey Fairchild, who was calling to her through the kitchen serving hatch. She laughed. ‘OK; sorry, Audrey. I was miles away just then. Thinking about the concert tonight and hoping it’ll all go off all right. Especially my solo…’

‘Oh give over! You’ve sung on your own dozens of times. You’ll be fine, you know you will… Are you sure that’s all you were daydreaming about?’ Audrey’s blue eyes twinkled mischievously as she smiled – a very knowing smile – at her best friend.

‘Of course! And what else would I be thinking about?’ retorted Maisie. A secretive, little half smile played around her lips, but she was determined not to give anything away. After all, she was only fifteen
years old – she kept trying to remind herself of this – and it was far too young to be imagining herself in love. At least, that was what everyone would say if they knew. But Maisie had felt this way about Bruce Tremaine for ages now, even before he had joined the RAF more than two years ago. And, as the old saying went, absence had made the heart grow fonder; Maisie’s heart at any rate. She did not know how Bruce felt about her, but he had written to her regularly all the while he had been away and she had written back. Friendly chatty letters had passed between the two of them, fortnightly at least, and that surely must mean that he did think something about her. But perhaps only as a friend…said the more commonsensical voice in her mind; a voice she immediately tried to quash.

Now, at the end of August, 1945, Bruce was coming home, just in time for the Victory concert which was to be held in St Bartholomew’s church hall that evening. Before that, in the afternoon, there was to be a teatime party for all the children in the little market town of Middlebeck. Maisie and Audrey, with their friend, Doris, from the farm, were now preparing for this event, assisting the ladies from the church congregation and the local Women’s Institute.

Maisie straightened the red checked cloth she had put over one of the tables and went into the kitchen at the rear of the hall to assist with the sandwich making. Audrey and Doris were working
hard, Audrey buttering the bread – or, to be more correct, spreading the bread with margarine – which Doris then spread with salmon paste before cutting the slices into four triangular pieces. Ada Nixon, Doris’s mother, had expertly cut all the loaves into thin slices, none of the girls, as yet, being expert enough to be in charge of a bread knife.

‘We don’t want doorsteps,’ Ada had declared, ‘especially not on a special occasion like today. And sandwiches look much better – much more party like – when they’re cut in triangles.’

‘What can I do?’ asked Maisie. ‘I’ve put all the cloths on the tables, like your mum told me to do, Audrey. Corner-wise; they look classier like that, don’t you think, than putting them on straight?’

‘It’s only kids that’ll be eating off ’em,’ laughed Doris, ‘and they’re not going to bother what the cloths look like, or the sandwiches neither. Here, Maisie; you can take over from me for a while. We’ve nearly come to the end o’ t’ salmon paste. I’ll go and ask me mam if she wants us to start on t’ boiled ham.’

‘Very well then…’ Maisie took over with the salmon paste, made from tins of pink salmon – the red variety was too precious to use on sandwiches – mashed together with a knob of salad cream and soft breadcrumbs to make it go further.

Audrey cast a sideways glance at her friend. ‘I was only teasing, y’ know.’ She lowered her voice. ‘But you are looking forward to seeing Bruce again, aren’t you?’

Maisie nodded silently. ‘Mmm… Don’t say anything to anybody, will you, Audrey?’ she said in a low voice. ‘People would think I was silly, I know they would. They’d tell me I’m just a schoolgirl and that I’m not old enough to know what it’s all about. Being in love, I mean… Because I do love him, Audrey. I think I’ve loved him for ages.’

‘I shan’t tell anybody, don’t worry,’ said Audrey. ‘I can keep a secret.’

‘And it’s got to be a secret until I know how he feels… Oh, Audrey! I’ve got butterflies in my tummy already, thinking about tonight.’

‘Well, you would have anyway, with the concert,’ replied Audrey. ‘So have I! I know I’m not actually taking part on the stage, but I’m anxious that the kiddies should do their best and not get stage fright.’

‘I don’t think little ’uns do get stage fright,’ said Maisie. ‘They just like dressing up and showing off a bit. I know our Joanie’s really looking forward to it.’

‘Oh, Joanie’s a natural,’ said Audrey. ‘She learned her part straight away, ages before any of the others, and she’s really got herself into the part of Alice.’

The Sunday school children of St Bartholomew’s, including Joanie, Maisie’s nine-year-old sister, were to act scenes from
Alice in Wonderland
, which Patience Fairchild, the rector’s wife, had adapted from the book with the help of her daughter,
Audrey; and it was Audrey who had been largely responsible for the production of the playlet. She was now a Sunday school teacher, and the enthusiasm she had brought to this task made it clear that the career she had planned for herself, that of an Infant teacher, would be an ideal choice. That was in the future, though, several years hence. Audrey still had her School Certificate year to do, then two years in the sixth form before she could apply for training college. So had Maisie, although she had no desire to become a teacher…

‘I’m glad our Joanie’s enjoying herself,’ Maisie said now. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing her performing on the stage. What about Jimmy? He’s not got a speaking part, has he?’

‘Oh no; he’s happy enough to be one of the playing cards, with the rest of the lads,’ replied Audrey. ‘He’s quite a comic though, your Jimmy; he has the others in fits of laughter.’

‘Yes, I’m sure he does,’ said Maisie dryly. ‘He acts the fool in school as well, from what Anne Mellodey tells me.’ Anne Mellodey had been Maisie and Audrey’s favourite teacher at the village school across the green, and now she had Jimmy Jackson in her class. ‘Never mind, he’ll maybe settle down eventually. I know he’s only mischievous, not real naughty, like he used to be when he was a little ’un.’

As far as settling into the school was concerned, however, and into their new life in the town of Middlebeck, Joanie and Jimmy had shown no
difficulties at all. Their former life in Armley, in the city of Leeds, was now well and truly a thing of the past.

Maisie had been the first of the family to come and live in the town, high up in the northern Yorkshire Dales, as an evacuee at the start of the war. Her mother, Lily, and the two younger children, escaping from a brutal husband and a disastrous marriage, had followed a couple of years later. Now Lily ran a successful little draper’s shop on the High Street and her three children lived with her; Maisie, aged fifteen, and Joanie and Jimmy, who were nine and eight years old. The family were now known as Jackson, Lily having managed to get a divorce from her former husband, Sidney Bragg, on the grounds of cruelty. Jackson was the name of Maisie’s beloved father, Davey, who had died, to Lily’s great sorrow, when the little girl was four years old.

Maisie had been forced to grow up very quickly, first of all in Armley, trying to protect herself and her mother from the sadistic behaviour of Sidney Bragg and his son, Percy; and later, in Middlebeck, where she had stayed for a considerable time with the rector, the Reverend Luke Fairchild and his wife, Patience. She felt, sometimes, quite mature for her fifteen years, and she knew that people seeing her for the first time might think she was several years older than that.

Her thoughts were wandering again now to the coming evening, when she would put on her new
dress to sing in the concert. She would feel very grown-up then, and she knew, too, that the colour and the style really suited her.

‘You look beautiful, our Maisie,’ her mother had said in a hushed voice, when she had tried on the finished dress. Tears had appeared momentarily in Lily’s eyes. ‘Your dad would’ve been real proud of you, love,’ she whispered.

It was not often that Maisie’s father was mentioned now, but she knew that her parents had been blissfully happy during the few years they had spent together until Davey Jackson’s untimely death. Lily’s subsequent marriage to Sidney Bragg had been a disastrous mistake, but not entirely unproductive, because out of it had come the ‘little ’uns’, Joanie and Jimmy, who were now developing into much more lovable children, belying the bad behaviour of their earlier years.

And now Lily had a man friend again; a much more suitable one this time, in Maisie’s eyes. Arthur Rawcliffe was due back in Middlebeck this weekend following his demob from the Army Catering Corps.

‘You’re miles away again, Maisie…’ teased Audrey. ‘But I’m not going to ask you what you’re thinking about this time.’

Maisie realised she had been staring into space, her knife poised over the now empty dish of salmon paste. ‘I wasn’t, actually,’ she replied. ‘I wasn’t thinking about…that.’ She would have said ‘him’,
but Doris had just come back with a plateful of ham; and Doris, although she was a good friend, could not see into Maisie’s mind – nor did Maisie want her to – in the way that Audrey was able to do. ‘As a matter of fact, I was thinking about my new dress that I’m going to wear tonight.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Doris, ‘then you can tell us both about it… See here; this boiled ham, it’s special, like. It’s home-cured, from one of our own pigs, and me mam says it’s to be used sparingly. She’s cut it into dead thin slices, and she says we’ve to spread a bit of this pickle stuff on it to make it go further.’ She placed a jar of bright yellow, homemade piccalilli on the table.

Audrey pulled a face. ‘I don’t think the kiddies will be all that keen on the taste of pickles.’

‘No…well, maybe that’s the idea,’ laughed Doris. ‘The sandwiches that are left will be for the helpers’ tea afterwards. I know me mam’s rather partial to boiled ham and pickles.’ The boiled ham, indeed, looked and smelled very tempting; pink fragrant slices, moist and with not a trace of fat, were piled on the willow pattern plate.

‘Come on, girls; let’s get moving,’ said Doris. ‘You carry on buttering, Audrey; I’ll see to the ham, an’ you can spread a bit of this yellow stuff on it, Maisie… Now, tell us all about this dress of yours? What colour is it?’

‘It’s pink,’ said Maisie, ‘but not a pale pink; it’s a sort of deep coral colour.’

‘It’ll look lovely with your dark hair and brown eyes,’ commented Audrey.

‘An’ it’s a long dress, right down to my ankles. I’ve never had a long dress before,’ nor had any of them, ‘but Mum says we can always shorten it later, so I can get more wear out of it. She’s made it herself from a paper pattern. Mum’s got real good at this make-do-and-mend stuff lately; but this is proper new material, a sort of silky cotton. We’ve got it in blue and green an’ all in the shop, but the pink was my favourite. Anyway…it’s got wide shoulder straps and a squarish neckline, quite low…’ She demonstrated, placing her hands tentatively on the gentle swell of her breasts. ‘And a nipped-in waist and a full skirt.’

‘You mean…you’ll have bare shoulders?’ asked Audrey.

‘Yeah…sort of. Well, yes, I will. But there’s nothing wrong with that, Audrey; it’s for this special concert, isn’t it? And I’ll be able to wear it as a sun-dress later. I can always put a cardigan over it,’ she added. Audrey was looking a mite disapproving.

‘It sounds lovely,’ said Doris, looking a tiny bit envious, but not unduly so. She was a good-natured girl, quite contented with her life and work on the farm, and it was very rarely that one saw her disgruntled or unhappy. Maisie knew, though, that Doris and her mother were very seldom able to afford new clothes. They did not need them on the
farm, and it was not often that they left its environs. But money, or the lack of it, was quite a problem, as Ada Nixon was a widow with her two sons and daughter all living at home. Pulling their weight, of course, on the family farm, but by no means well off.

Maisie felt a shade guilty; and conscious that she could be giving the impression that she was showing off, she decided to change the subject. ‘Yeah…it’s OK,’ she said nonchalantly, ‘but I’ll be glad when my solo’s over and done with, I can tell you. Are your brothers coming tonight, Doris?’

‘They both say they’re coming,’ replied Doris, ‘but I think our Ted’s only coming so as he can have a laugh at me doing my recitation, the rotten so-and-so!’

‘He won’t laugh,’ said Maisie indignantly. ‘Why should he? I bet he’ll be dead proud of you. What are you reciting?’

‘Ah, it’s a secret,’ said Doris. ‘You’ll have to wait and see. Actually…folks are supposed to laugh, ’cause it’s a funny poem, y’ see – a humorous one, I mean. But our Ted would kill himself laughing anyway, seeing me up on t’ stage.’

‘So there’s only me that won’t be on the stage tonight,’ said Audrey, sounding a little regretful. ‘Even our Tim’s going to do a piano solo. Mum’s managed to persuade him. She really wanted both of us, him and me, to do a duet, but I didn’t want to. I get real scared in front of an audience; anyway,
I haven’t had much time to practise, with producing the play for the children and everything.’