The Carpenter's Children (17 page)

And it will be up to me to comfort your mother,
thought Tom, to bear with her grief and rage, as if I wasn’t suffering just as much.

As the sunny days passed, Ernest’s health improved rapidly, but Tom secretly wished that his son might remain a pale, anaemic invalid; it would only be a matter of time before he followed Aaron to the battlefields. William Hickory said goodbye to his sweetheart Phyllis Bird, and went to join her brothers Tim and Ted who had been early volunteers; and the Rev. Mr Saville and his wife had to say goodbye to their handsome, golden-haired son, Philip, now eighteen. Sidney Goddard was reluctant to go out of doors or face the customers who came in to buy haberdashery from his father’s shop, tactlessly remarking that all the best men were now in the army. And Eddie Cooper told Tom how his daughter Mary had wept when she saw Dick Yeomans off on his train.

‘He’ll be home for Christmas, as like as not,’ Eddie had told her, but she had gone on weeping, refusing to be comforted.

Lady Neville had gone to visit a bereaved family some distance away on the other side of South Camp. She drove herself in the one-horse two-seater gig, waving aside old Mr Standish’s offer to drive, as she needed
to concentrate her mind on her sad task, and what she could say to a couple who had lost a son.

‘You’ll serve me best by staying here,’ she told him, noting his crestfallen look. ‘Nurse Payne has the day off, and Miss Letitia is in her room with another of her headaches, so I’m having to leave the manor in the charge of Miss Munday and Flossie. Mrs Gann will leave as soon as suppers are cleared away, so I’ll be very grateful to know that you’re here to keep an eye on things.’

The old butler brightened as she had known he would, at being given this responsibility. ‘Trust me, your ladyship, I’ll take care o’ them all.’

She nodded and smiled. All the present patients were recovering, and only one amputee was still confined to bed. She trusted Grace Munday who had been re-instated as ward domestic assistant, much to Nurse Payne’s indignation, especially when the men addressed the saucy young hussy as ‘Nurse’. Lady Neville had taken on Grace largely for her father’s sake, but she had grown to like the girl for her cheerfulness and initiative, and the fact that the men found her amusing.

It had been a beautiful day, and after supper most of the men had gathered in the spacious conservatory at the back of Hassett Manor. It was known as the salon, and was furnished with comfortable basket chairs and a couple of tables. An upright piano stood at one end, flanked by potted palms, and one
of the patients sat idly tinkling out tunes while the rest played cards, read, talked or sat looking out at the rose garden, drinking in the peace of the evening, contrasted with the scenes they had recently experienced. Old Mr Standish sat on a garden bench smoking his pipe, and the aroma of his tobacco smoke mingled with the scent of roses rising on the still air and drifting into the salon through the open windows and casement doors. The men were dressed in the uniform of the wounded, blue tunics and red ties; some needed crutches or sticks to aid their walking, and Grace was chatting with the one still confined to bed; it was he who gave her the idea of having a sing-song around the piano, and she called Flossie to help her move the man’s bed out to join the other men in the salon.

‘No, no, we don’t need any help,’ she said when a couple of patients offered to push the bed along on its casters. ‘Pansy Potter, the strong man’s daughter, that’s me!’

‘Now, then, let’s see what songs we’ve got!’ she said, riffling through the sheet music kept in the piano stool and on top of the instrument, looking for something rather livelier than the songs that had been acceptable at Lady Neville’s musical evenings. ‘Hm – practically all of Gilbert and Sullivan’s and
Sentimental Songs for the Family
…
Old Favourites
… ooh, and what’s this?
The Music Hall, a Selection of Songs Made Popular by Miss Marie Lloyd
– hooray!
We’ll have a go at some of those.’ She looked up and raised her voice. ‘Gather round, everybody, give our pianist another glass of Adam’s ale, and who’s going to start us off? We all know “Daisy, Daisy, Give Me Your Answer, Do!”’

The men sang it with gusto, and Grace then gave them ‘There Was I, Waiting at the Church’, with all the men roaring out ‘My wife won’t let me!’ at the end.

‘Coo, yer don’t ’alf sing a treat, Grace,’ marvelled Flossie, round-eyed.

‘So what about you, Flossie? What can you give us?’

‘I know ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’,’ offered Flossie, but Grace stopped her. ‘We don’t want reminding of the Zeppelins, thank you – does anybody know a “round”, something we can divide up into parts?’

‘Three Blind Mice’ was suggested and duly sung in four parts, and an Irishman felt encouraged to stand up and sing a solo.

‘So I’ll wait for the wild rose that’s waitin’ for me

Where the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea!’

At the end of this soulful rendering, Grace ostentatiously pulled a handkerchief out of her overall pocket and dabbed her eyes in an excess of pretended emotion; when she’d recovered, she led
the company in ‘Oranges and Lemons’, sung in two parts, one behind the other, a bit of a fiasco that ended in laughter. Flushed with pleasure at the men’s enjoyment, she asked the pianist to look up the Marie Lloyd songbook, and told Flossie to go and fetch a wide-brimmed hat from the row of hooks in the kitchen corridor.

‘And a parasol if you can find one,’ she called after the girl, though Flossie could only find a navy-blue velour hat that Mrs Gann wore during the winter, and the nearest thing to a parasol was a large,
dark-coloured
umbrella.

‘They’ll just have to do, it’s up to me to make the best of them,’ said Grace with a rueful grin. ‘At your convenience, Mr Piano-man!’

As he struck the opening chord, she climbed up on to one of the tables, the hat at a jaunty angle, the umbrella/parasol unfurled and twirling round her head as she gave a robust impersonation of the great music hall diva.

‘If I show my shape just a little bit,

Just a little bit, not too much of it –

If I show my shape just a little bit,

It’s the little bit the boys admire!’

Whistles, cheers, laughter and delighted applause greeted this, a heady mixture that Grace found intoxicating. She opened and closed the umbrella, pirouetting on the table, her hips swaying as she belted out the song again, with many winks and
suggestive glances from her dark eyes.

‘Watch that table, Grace, it ain’t ’alf wobbly!’ warned Flossie, and three of the men got up to hold it steady while Grace cavorted above them in reckless abandon. All eyes were fixed on her – which is why nobody noticed Nurse Payne creeping quietly into the salon, drawn by the sound of ‘shameless
goings-on
’, as she was later to describe the scene to Lady Neville. At the same moment Miss Letitia Neville left her room to investigate the noise which was keeping her awake; she descended the stairs and stood behind Nurse Payne, a pale figure with tragic eyes. Grace carried on singing and dancing, unaware that retribution was about to fall on her. Flossie was the first to see Nurse Payne, and froze: the men followed her gaze and made frantic signals to Grace who eventually turned and saw, not outrage but grim triumph on the face of her adversary.

‘
You,
madam, will go straight to Lady Neville as soon as she returns,’ promised Nurse Payne with relish, and Miss Letitia, who had no wish to take part in a ‘scene’, disappeared upstairs again.

Old Mr Standish, awakened from his doze by ‘the sound of revelry,’ as he called it, appeared at the open casement door and gaped at the suddenly curtailed entertainment. However would he explain this to her ladyship, who had entrusted him with the care of the manor?

Lady Neville was late returning from the
grief-stricken
family, and told Nurse Payne firmly that any breach of discipline would be dealt with in the morning, which meant that Grace had the night hours to speculate on her fate, which did not make for peaceful sleep.

Lady Neville spoke with her daughter over their shared breakfast about the events of the previous evening, and at ten o’clock she sat at her desk in the improvised office she used to conduct all matters relating to Hassett Manor as a convalescent home for war wounded. She sent first for Nurse Payne and heard her story, then dismissed her and sent for Flossie, then Mr Standish and the patient who had played the piano. Finally she sent for Grace Munday.

‘I’m very surprised indeed to hear what happened last night, Grace, and it is your parents I’m most sorry for,’ she said gravely. ‘You’ve already been warned once about foolish and undignified conduct, yet as soon as my back was turned, you’ve let yourself down again. It’s such a pity, because you have many good qualities, but I cannot allow a valuable trained nurse like Miss Payne to be offended a second time, and she would be if I allowed you to stay. You will therefore pack your belongings and tidy your room, and leave by midday on Friday.’

‘But Lady Neville, I only wanted to cheer up the patients, and they really did enjoy themselves, and
they’ll tell you so!’ protested Grace, close to tears. Whatever would she say to her father?

‘I understand that your motives were good, but my dear girl, your behaviour was foolish in the extreme,’ said her ladyship, not unkindly. ‘If you were a few years older, I could imagine you entertaining servicemen at bona fide concerts, for you certainly have talent. I have no choice but to dismiss you from Hassett Manor, but…no, don’t cry, Grace, but listen carefully to some good advice. I think you should train as a nurse, but as you’re only seventeen, I suggest you apply to the matron of Everham General Hospital to work as a nursing cadet for a year. I happen to know her, and will put in a good word for you – I won’t send you away without a reference. I shall be very sorry to part with you, but oh! Grace Munday, you’ll have to learn to control that wayward, wilful streak in your nature, or it will land you in real trouble one day, and it won’t only be yourself that will be shamed, it will be your whole family. I will write to your parents about my recommendations. You may go now.’

‘But Lady Neville—’ Grace began, but the lady held up her hand.

‘This interview is ended. You may go.’

And out Grace went, smarting with anger against Nurse Payne and what she saw as injustice on the part of Lady Neville.

The post arrived while the vicar and his wife were at breakfast in the kitchen, and Isabel eagerly went to pick up the three envelopes on the doormat.

‘One from Mum,’ she said, setting it down beside her bowl of porridge. ‘And one from your dad, there – and one from – let me see…’ She sliced open the envelope. ‘Oh, it’s from my old friend Mary Cooper! There must be a good reason for her to write.’ She sat down and read the letter between spoonfuls of porridge.

‘Poor Mary! She and Dick Yeomans are engaged, but he’s been conscripted and sent off to France. What a dreadful shame – and so has Philip Saville the vicar’s son – I wouldn’t have thought him old enough, but he’s just eighteen, she says, and goes on to say there are hardly any young men left in North Camp, only Sidney Goddard because of his short sight. She says she wishes Dick had short sight, too – oh, Mark, she sounds heartbroken. I must write to her today.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Another cup of tea, dear, before we go?’

‘Er…no, thank you, Isabel.’ He too looked at the clock. ‘I’d better be off, the Board of Guardians meets this morning, and I need to have my ammunition ready.’ He rose from the table.

‘But aren’t you going to read your letter from your dad?’

‘Not just now, dear, later, when I’ve got a chance to look at it properly. Goodbye, my love – don’t let
them work you too hard at that school –’bye!’

And with a brief farewell kiss he was gone, the letter from the Rev. Richard Storey tucked away in an inside pocket. Isabel thought he seemed preoccupied, but reminded herself that he always had a lot on his mind, things he shared with her and things he didn’t, like the confidential circumstances of his parishioners, by reason of his office as a priest in holy orders. She looked forward to the evening when they could sit down and share the news in their letters. Meanwhile she perused the one from her mother, and learnt of the latest events in Grace’s life; Isabel frowned as she read it. It was too bad of her thoughtless younger sister to get herself dismissed from Hassett Manor, subjecting her parents to yet more gossip. It seemed that she had now started working as a cadet nurse at Everham General Hospital, thanks to the kindness of Lady Neville. And that wasn’t all, for Mrs Munday worried constantly about Ernest, now sufficiently recovered to assist both his father and Eddie Cooper in their respective trades as the need arose. Work was getting scarcer as people postponed the jobs that needed doing until after the war.

‘You can imagine my mixed feelings, Isabel, when I see your brother looking healthier and feeling stronger every day. Your dad and I can’t speak of our deepest fears for him, and this is yet another burden to bear. We’ve never had secrets from each other before, yet I’m afraid to ask him what he really thinks. Oh,
for an end to this wicked, wasteful war!’

Isabel folded the two depressing letters into their envelopes and placed them in the rack on the parlour table. They would hardly make for happy reading when shared with Mark.

‘And what was in your dad’s letter, Mark?’ she asked that evening as they sat down to supper.

‘Oh, nothing much, dear – ecclesiastical stuff, mainly.’

‘Well, come on, then, let’s hear it!’

‘I’ve gone and left it in the vestry or somewhere, would you believe – not that there was much in it, as I said. My father likes to argue over issues of the day, relating them to his faith, questions of right and wrong, that sort of thing – cerebral rather than practical!’

Her eyes were fixed on his face as he tucked into his supper of bacon ribs with cabbage and boiled potatoes, avoiding her eyes.

‘What about your mother?’ he asked. ‘What did she say in
her
letter?’