A Family's Duty

Sir Cedric Neville preferred to cover the four miles between Everham Magistrates’ Courts and Hassett Manor on horseback, rather than take the infrequent train service. It was a perfect day in May, but Neville’s thoughts were not on the verdant Hampshire countryside all around him. He had seen half a dozen cases that morning, and heard pleas of guilty from the drunk and disorderly, petty thieves and a couple of women whose public fight had resulted in a black eye for one and a split lip for the other. He had judged them to be about equally matched, and had cautioned them both for their ‘disgraceful behaviour’. Both had children under school age, and he therefore let them go with a warning of a fine if they came before him again. A drunken tramp had been fined five shillings, and another allowed to go free with a caution, because Neville could seldom punish a war veteran, having served in France himself. Where the man had
a wife and children who suffered because of his drinking, Neville gave him a severe reprimand and ordered him to pay one shilling; persistent offenders got a short prison sentence. Neville was conscious of his own inadequacy as a magistrate, because he always thought he should do something to help the poor devils, and would if he had the time and the wherewithal. He had been so much more fortunate than any of them, for he had married Isabel Storey, a war widow with two children, now in her early forties, who was well known in the adjoining villages of North Camp and South Camp; he often thought that she did more good than he did.

He found her about to leave for the Rectory when he reached the manor, to attend the Ladies’ Hour held there every Wednesday by the curate’s wife, Mrs Kennard.

‘Rebecca’s at the stables today, so I hope Miss Pearson will be there to play the piano for us,’ Isabel said. ‘Otherwise I shall have to give them the note to start on.’

‘Well, don’t start too high or too low,’ he said with an affectionate grin. ‘Can’t you ask Philip Saville to play for you? The council offices are closed on Wednesday afternoons, and I passed him on the Everham Road, coming home. I could go back to the cottage in the pony-trap to bring him back if you like. His aunt hasn’t got a telephone.’

‘Do you think he’d mind?’ asked Isabel doubtfully. ‘All of us old ladies, I mean – hardly an incentive to the poor man!’

‘’Course he wouldn’t mind, it would do him good.’ Cedric laughed. ‘And
you’re
not old! – though it would be nice if you could introduce him to a suitable unmarried lady. What about that girl who works at Thomas and Gibson’s, the one with the old dragon of a mother. What’s their name …?’

‘Poor Miss Pearson? I was going to ask her to play for
us, only she gets flustered if she doesn’t know the tune – and she’s so painfully shy.’

‘There you are then – introduce her to Saville and let them play duets to entertain the ladies!’

‘You do say some silly things, Cedric! They’d both be so embarrassed that they’d never come again.’ Isabel accepted that her husband was a tease, but she cared about the feelings of those who did not share his brand of humour. ‘Go on then, get out the pony-trap and go and ask Mr Saville if he’ll play for us. I’ll come with you as far as the Rectory.’

‘Aye, aye, captain.’

Thomas and Gibson’s haberdashery had stood on the main street of North Camp well before the turn of the century, long after Mrs Thomas and her sister Miss Gibson had passed on. It had changed hands twice, but had kept the ladies’ names engraved on the glass of two bay windows facing the street. The present manager Mr Richardson liked the shop’s cosily old-fashioned yet respectful air, reflecting over fifty years of good customer service. Young Mr John Richardson would take over his father’s business in the course of time, and meanwhile worked as a floor manager at Page’s, the big department store in Everham, four miles away but not as distant since the ‘Spur’ had been built – a cul-
de-sac
railway branch line that joined North Camp to Everham on the Southern Railway from London to Southampton. A disabled war veteran acted as ticket seller and collector, and waved the flag when the three-carriage train steamed back to Everham.

Wednesday was early closing day, and Miss Pearson tidied the glass-topped counter with its yard-long brass tape
measure inserted; she put away the ribbons, buttons and zip fasteners, and the sharp scissors used for cutting lengths of material.

‘Are you ready to leave, Miss Pearson?’ called Richardson from his office at the back. ‘Two letters to post on your way!’

‘Right, Mr Richardson,’ she answered, clearing away the tea tray, emptying the pot, and rinsing the leaves down the drain. She took down her felt hat and long jacket from the hook in the passage, and pulled on her gloves. Mrs Pearson, her mother, insisted that she wore a vest and liberty bodice until the end of May.

Freedom! The church bell chimed for one o’clock and Miss Pearson set out to walk towards the meadows beside the Blackwater river, where she sat down under a tree to eat her packed lunch; it consisted only of two cheese sandwiches, but she knew there would be some of Mrs Kennard’s home-baked cakes and biscuits at the Rectory. Her spirits lifted; for the next hour she could enjoy the rural scene, the fresh new foliage on the trees, the sunlight on the water; and she could indulge her secret thoughts in solitude, reliving the moment when young Mr Richardson had breezed into the shop yesterday and commented on her hair, swept up into a bunch on the top of her head and secured by hair pins which tended to loosen and fall out. He had bent down and picked up a stray pin.

‘Why don’t you take them all out, Valerie, and let that pretty hair fall down over your shoulders?’ he had teased, and as always she had been unable to think of a suitably witty rejoinder. He had called her Valerie, and she longed to call him John, but that wouldn’t have been right; her mother would be horrified at such forwardness – so he had smiled and passed on into his father’s office. Whatever must he
think of her stupid shyness? Thank heaven he could not read her thoughts, and here by the Blackwater she could indulge in day-dreams where the two of them held long, intelligent conversations, and he would reach for her hand and look deep into her brown eyes with a love that reflected her own.

At the Rectory Mrs Kennard, wearing a voluminous smock, was preparing for the Ladies’ Hour. Lady Neville had already arrived, but without Miss Rebecca Neville. There would be Miss Rudge who taught at St Peter’s Church of England Primary School which closed on Wednesday afternoons, Councillor Mrs Tomlinson, Mrs Lupton the doctor’s wife, Miss Pearson and sometimes Mrs Pearson, and two young mothers who lived next-door to each other and took turns at attending, the one at home looking after the other’s child as well as her own. The curate’s wife had tried unsuccessfully to provide a crèche for the children, but the rector and Mrs Allingham who had lived here for over thirty years and considered it theirs, had flatly forbidden it because of the noise and general disturbance which would shatter the peace of the six-bedroomed Rectory.

‘It would be no more disturbing than our chatter and singing,’ Joan Kennard now confided to Lady Isabel. ‘And when the baby comes—’

Isabel had smiled and shrugged in sympathy. ‘I’d gladly offer Hassett Manor for the meetings, only it’s such a long way out of North Camp for the older ladies to walk,’ she said. ‘In any case, you have every right to hold the Ladies’ Hour here – it’s your home now, as much as the Allinghams. You need to put your foot down, Joan, politely but firmly. Would you like
me
to speak to Mrs Allingham?’

‘Thank you, Lady – er, Neville, but—’

(If only I were just plain Mrs Neville, thought Isabel.)

‘—but it might cause bad feeling between them and us.’ Joan Kennard lowered her voice. ‘There’s tension between Alan and the Reverend Allingham as it is, and I don’t want the old … the rector to start complaining about the Ladies’ Hour. It’s such a good way to get to know the women of the parish and their families.’

‘Yes, I find it helpful, too,’ said Isabel, who privately thought the Allinghams envious of the Kennards’ popularity. ‘Ah, there’s Miss Pearson coming up the drive, and – oh, it’s Grace – Mrs Nuttall – on her bicycle.’ She laughed. ‘We must get them
all
cycling, it’s going to be the fashion of the future!’ This was a joke, of course, as not many of the women had bicycles, and to pedal along showing their legs was generally considered rather fast.

Grace Nuttall dismounted, nodded to her sister and took her cycle round to the back of the Rectory. ‘I’ve just been recommending it to Miss Pearson,’ she said. ‘She could halve the time it takes to get from her mother’s house to Thomas and Gibson’s.’

Valerie coloured and shook her head, muttering that she had never possessed a bicycle, and knowing that her mother would never approve of her making such an exhibition of herself. Isabel Neville shook her head at her sister, for she knew of Mrs Pearson’s domestic tyranny; having lost her son in the war, and her husband in the influenza epidemic that followed it, she had clung to her unmarried daughter with what she thought was devotion. Herself a war widow, Isabel had seen this situation played out over and over again; the loss of a whole generation of men had left a generation
of single women whose duty – even their privilege, some thought – was to care for their ageing parents.

‘If only we could introduce her to some nice young man,’ Isabel had said in a low voice to Joan Kennard, remembering her husband’s words. ‘There are so many sweet souls who’d have been happy wives and mothers if it hadn’t been for that – that –
wicked
war! Now they have to care for an older generation while they themselves grow old. It’s so unfair.’

Mrs Kennard nodded. They all knew that Lady Isabel had lost her first husband, an Anglican vicar of an East End parish who’d survived the war only to die a broken and cynical man at the end of it. Sir Cedric Neville, her second husband, had also served in the war among the first men of the tank corps; now, in addition to running his estate, he gave his services as a councillor and magistrate, and was active in the British Legion on behalf of war veterans and their families.

‘Where’s Miss Rebecca, then?’ the ladies asked.

‘She can’t come this afternoon, unfortunately – she’s at the riding stables,’ said her ladyship. ‘But Cedric has gone to ask Philip Saville if he can play the piano for us. Ah, yes, there they are now, in the pony-trap.’

‘We’re all very grateful to you, Philip,’ she said as Mr Saville came in, and Mrs Kennard echoed her words. The ladies murmured their appreciation, and their eyes softened, for here was another victim of the Great War, and worthy of their consideration. Once the golden-haired boy of North Camp, the son of the previous incumbent of St Peter’s, Philip had excelled at tennis and cricket, and his dazzling good looks had stirred the heart of many a young girl who dreamt of him choosing her as his wife. When he had enlisted early in 1915, half of North Camp came out to cheer and wave
farewell as he boarded the train at Everham. The Reverend Mr Saville and Mrs Saville hid their fears beneath smiles of pride, though as the war had gone on and casualty lists grew longer, they shared their anxiety with many of their parishioners who were comforted by their example.

When the telegram had arrived at the Rectory, it was said that Mrs Saville had fainted. When her husband opened it, he read that Philip had been wounded, and was in a hospital in northern France. It was five months later, in September 1917, that Mr and Mrs Saville had been summoned to London to collect their son from Charing Cross Hospital, where he had been taken on arrival from the crowded ambulance train that had carried the latest wounded up from Southampton. They had brought him home to the Rectory, and the people of North Camp eagerly looked forward to greeting their golden boy in church again; but it was almost Christmas before they caught sight of a thin, one-legged cripple walking unsteadily on crutches, his blue eyes sunk into bony orbits, having looked upon unspeakable horrors. When he opened his mouth he gave a deep, rattling cough, the result of inhaling poison gas. Words of congratulation froze on the lips of those who recognised Philip Saville, now an object of silent pity.

That had been twenty years ago. The Reverend Saville had retired and moved with his wife to another Hampshire village, but Philip had wanted to stay at North Camp, a clerk in the council offices in Everham, and lodging with his mother’s sister, his Aunt Enid, in her cottage on the Everham Road. He had not followed his father into the Church, but instead had studied music and now played the organ at St Peter’s. He had been fitted with an artificial
left leg made of wood, but walked stiffly with a stick, as it had no movable knee joint. His spirits had sunk when Sir Cedric Neville came to ask him to play for the Ladies’ Hour, but he could not refuse the polite request, which now earned him the embarrassing approval of the ladies. Grace Nuttall was the only one disappointed at Miss Neville’s absence, and regretted making the effort to attend today, but she hid her feelings as best she could.

Mr Saville seemed to know every tune requested of him, both sacred and secular, and accompanied them on the piano with verve and versatility. The Ladies’ Hour opened as usual with a hymn, and this week the choice had been ‘To Be a Pilgrim’; then Mrs Kennard introduced their speaker, a plump, bosomy lady wearing an enormous hat, who spoke emotionally about the work done by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

‘Picture an unhappy horse in a field, whose tail has been cruelly cut short, so that the poor creature can’t swish away the flies that torment it on a day like today,’ she said, ‘or a pathetic pet dog kept tied up to a post in a garden, without water at hand, and unable to run up and down the path; this is what breaks my heart, dear ladies. I’ve brought copies with me of our magazine,
Animal Ways
, which I’ll gladly distribute among you at the end of my talk, and I’m sure you will want to make a small donation to our very good cause.’

When all the magazines had been bought up (Lady Isabel bought the last half dozen and put a generous donation in the collecting box), the lady stood up with tears in her eyes. ‘God bless you all, dear ladies! Any friend of animals is a friend of mine!’