When Stella had not reappeared after ten minutes, Joe gave up his game of patience, rubbed his face, anxious. His own unease, he observed, was reflected by all those in the room. A long telephone conversation, at Hallows Farm, was far from a normal occurrence.
Stella came back at last. Pale-faced, her eyes swept dryly over each of them. She tossed back her head, spoke with the efficiency of one only just in control.
‘That was Philip’s mother,’ she said. ‘She was ringing to tell me Philip’s in hospital. He’s lost a leg: seems there’s little hope of saving his second foot.’
‘
Stella!
’ said Joe.
Ag jumped up, put an arm round her friend.
‘He was on leave in London, staying with his friend in Bermondsey. They had a day in the West End, apparently … Bond Street. They were on their way home. There was an air-raid warning: they were on a bus. It seems they couldn’t get to a shelter in time.’ She paused. ‘Would you mind if I took the day off tomorrow, Mr Lawrence? I must go to London. The hospital. See him.’
‘I’ll take you to the early train, of course,’ said Mr Lawrence.
‘Sit down, Stella,’ said his wife, leaving her own chair.
Joe quietly left the room.
The others did their best: Bournevita, an arm to guide Stella up the stairs, quiet listening faces in the attic, waiting for her to cry, to speak.
Stella thanked them, but said nothing. Before she got into bed she picked up the photograph of Philip that she had kissed with such passion every night, this time last year – and looked at it for a long time. Then she replaced it.
‘He expected to be wounded in battle,’ she said eventually. ‘But to be made useless by a bomb in the street: how will he ever cope with that?’
‘Poor, poor Philip,’ said Prue, rummaging in her drawer for a black bow which she would wear tomorrow, just as she had for Barry.
The following day was interminable for Joe. Heavy rain, mud, cold. He busied himself sorting out farm machinery in the barn, but flinging heavily rusted iron into various piles was no antidote to his thoughts. Eventually, by late afternoon, dirty light out in the yard, he slumped on to a pile of new straw, tried to slow the thumpings of his heart and think clearly.
Mr Lawrence appeared. He quickly assessed the state of Joe’s dejection.
‘We’re all worried for the poor girl,’ he said, ‘but Stella’s got guts if anyone has. She’ll stand by him, legs or no legs.’ Joe met his father’s eye. ‘Look, son, I’ve got a mass of paperwork still this evening. Would you go to the station, fetch her?’
Joe looked at his watch. ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘She might not be up to facing everyone at supper. Might be better if I suggested a sandwich and a stiff whisky at The Bells.’
‘Good idea,’ said Mr Lawrence.
Stella’s train from London was half an hour late. Joe waited in the cold dark of the platform. When finally it steamed in, she was the only passenger to get off. They hugged each other silently, then walked hand in hand to the car park. They sat in the bucket seats of the Wolseley, rich with its smells of old leather and wet dog. There was no moon, dense darkness.
It was Joe who broke the silence. ‘I know what you’ve had to decide,’ he said.
He sensed her nod in the dark. ‘Joe,’ she said, ‘you should have seen him.’
‘I can imagine. I know what you must do, what
we
must do.’
‘I don’t know what else … I mean, ordinary life has finished for him. Pain, dependency. All the things he hoped for ripped away in a moment. Except me. He was very drugged, of course, but he said the only thing worth living for, now, was me. Us. Marriage. Then he said he’d be the first to understand if I couldn’t go through with it, if I wanted my release.’ She sighed. ‘He was in so many bandages, mummy-like. I looked at his face and I thought: how could I have said to this man, who I don’t know at all, or love, that I would marry him? A complete stranger. Just as I was leaving – I was only with him for half an hour, the nurse said he couldn’t take any more – he said he’d bought the ring. He said he wouldn’t give it to me then, though: that would be tempting fate. But what was I going to do, he said? Somehow he needed to know the answer then. It would be his lifeline, or his death.’
‘So?’
‘So I said I’d stand by him.’
Joe, one arm round her taut body, moved to kiss away her silent tears. Then he cleared his throat, managed to find a vibrant voice.
‘Listen, my love, you must be exhausted. I’ve said you won’t want supper at home, I might take you for a drink at The Bells. Would you like that?’
‘I’d rather stay here. Oh, my darling Joe,’ she said.
‘I love you,’ he said. ‘There’s no new way to say it. I don’t know if I can make you believe me, but I shall love you for ever, no matter whom we marry. Remember the certainty of my love. Always.’
‘And mine,’ she said.
They talked till the cold of dawn. On the journey back to the farm, the wheels of the car split frozen puddles, and early mists rose up from the land.
In their last two weeks at Hallows Farm, jobs began to run out. The girls spent the short dark days helping Mrs Lawrence sort out and pack up things in the house, and Mr Lawrence to do the same outside. Only Prue was grateful for an easing off of physical labour. Busy accommodating and consoling her two men as often as she could before leaving, she was exhausted but radiant. Ag’s energies were spent in trying to keep up Mrs Lawrence’s spirits. She produced many a reason to persuade her employer that life in Yorkshire could be as rewarding as in Dorset, and was pleased to see the occasional spark of anticipation breaking through the melancholy. Stella’s low spirits were understood by everyone: none but Ag saw they were matched, beneath a normal surface, in Joe’s heart. To the last, Joe and Stella managed to continue their normal behaviour. To the last, they liked to believe, no one had guessed their secret with its bitter ending.
Mr Lawrence had contemplated for some time how best to manage a swift departure. He was not one for drawn-out, emotional farewells, and to that end he made a plan. He would load the girls’ luggage into the boot of the Wolseley while they ate their last breakfast, then make sure they were away fast.
It was a dreary morning, the day of their going: frosty cobwebs the only sparkle in the whitish gloom. The girls wore their coloured travelling suits, the ones that had so alarmed Mr Lawrence on their arrival, he remembered with a smile. Due to the cold, they pulled their WLA greatcoats over their shoulders – Prue’s had arrived just a week ago. Half-diamonds were sewn on their lapels.
Mr Lawrence hurried them out as soon as they had finished eating, no nonsense. Each girl hugged Mrs Lawrence quickly in the hall. Outside, they stood in a line waiting to see how Joe planned to conduct his farewells. He went up to each in turn, gripped her by the shoulders, kissed her lightly on each cheek. Stella was last. In this, the final part of the act, his behaviour to her could be no different.
Stella sat next to Mr Lawrence in the front of the car. Her natural place, somehow, he thought, after all he had gone through. His private triumph was to be at ease beside her.
Joe stood at the door, his arm round his mother’s shoulder. She flapped a hand at some nearby bantams.
‘Remember them, Ag?’ asked Prue. She giggled. ‘You were so bloody snooty just because I didn’t know a bantam from a hen.’
‘Sorry,’ said Ag.
The Wolseley lurched away. Everyone waved.
Mr Lawrence slowed down as they reached Ratty’s cottage. He could see, in the mist, the old man standing at the gate. As they passed Ratty raised his cap, shook his fist in the air, thumb up. He’d meant to come down to the farm last night and say goodbye officially. But he hadn’t much fancied a formal parting from the holy one – or the others, for that matter. Besides, with all the things there were to attend to in the cottage, in his new state of freedom, he liked to spend the evenings at home, marvelling at his solitude.
S
tella’s bed had been drawn up to the window. Propped up on her pillows, she had a good view of the dales outside, a distant farmhouse half-hidden by trees, the church tower. On the day she was supposed to be lunching with Prue and Ag in London, Janice brought her a little poached fish and purée of carrot on a tray. She tried to eat it – the doctor had said she must try to eat to keep up her strength – but she had no appetite. Instead, she watched the cows. Friesians.
Stella had had every intention of joining the others for the annual lunch. Her recent bad attack was over. For the last week she had been feeling better, getting up, pottering round the garden on warm days. The pain had faded. But last night the wretched business had returned, exhausting her. She had taken as many pills as she dared, thought she would be fine by morning. But she wasn’t. When she put her legs on the floor, weakness and dizziness overcame her. Back under the sheets, bent in a certain way she had found eased the pain, she tried to will herself to be all right. They would be so disappointed. She was furious with herself. It was such a nuisance, this persistent bad health, this fading of energy and capacity. She hated being old.
An hour later, Stella knew there was no hope of making the journey. She rang the hotel, asked for a message to be taken to the others when they arrived in the restaurant. She hoped they would telephone her before they left.
At about the time Prue would doubtless be ordering a frivolous chocolate pudding, while Ag demanded English brie (she had become so fierce about all things British, in her old age), Stella laid aside her tray. Outside, the cows were halfway up the hill. Lying down, chewing the cud. She could never get used to them, these alien cows. They were
very
different from the old herd. She didn’t know their names, of course. Didn’t want to: they were nothing to do with her. Sometimes, in the gloaming, when one of them was lying stretched on its side, she would confuse it with Nancy’s corpse after the incendiary bombs. Then it would jump up, but not be Nancy come to life, and Stella would turn her mind to something else.
She lay back, thought she might doze for a while. These days, there was little time to give much thought to the past. She had to conserve her energies for all that had to be organized now: Joe’s moving in, the deciding which room should be his, which shed should be converted to a kennel for his dogs – quite a palaver, it would be, establishing everything to his liking.
But on the day of the annual reunion, so annoyingly missed, Stella fell to thinking about the whole spectrum of their lunches in the past: the charting of their lives over the last fifty years. She closed her eyes.
The first lunch was in 1946. Terrible food, but none of them minded, because there was so much news. Prue, in bright emerald, still wearing a matching bow, had hardly been able to contain herself. Even before the arrival of the tinned soup, she had told them about the second Barry she had recently met – Barry Two, as he became known ever after. According to Prue, a rare and wonderful man. Barry Two, at that time, owned a chain of bicycle shops, but had sights on bigger things. He was negotiating to buy a picture house on the outskirts of Leeds. Prue was convinced of his ambition, his potential, his drive. She believed one day he would own a whole chain of cinemas, and she was right. Ten years after the war, Barry Two could claim to be one of the richest men in the north. Today, he was a multimillionaire, and the gold taps, servants and cocktails Prue had dreamed of, as she ploughed, and had described to Stella from the dung heap, had been achieved long ago. Her only disappointment was no children. Still, Barry Two, a ‘real ball of fire’, but childlike in many ways, took up all Prue’s time. She had adjusted to a childless household, bred spoilt poodles, and been happy for years.
Stella’s own news, that year, was fascinating to Prue, who had never guessed a thing at the time. Less surprising to Ag, who admitted she had known all along.
She told them that she and Joe had written to each other every week since the departure from Hallows Farm, though they rarely met. When the war was over, they had taken the Wolseley, by now in the last stages of general corrosion, and had driven round the battered French countryside. They had found sun in the Pyrenees, small cafés that still managed to serve delicious coffee,
home-made
croissants and apricot jam.
Soon after their return, her marriage to Philip took place. She spent her honeymoon in Torquay.
Ag, that first lunch, told them she was at law school. Enjoying it. No, she was still without a boyfriend. The one who kept most in touch with the Lawrences, she and Mrs Lawrence maintained a regular correspondence. She had gone up to Yorkshire to help out for three months. Nothing like Dorset, she said.
They’d all met, of course, at Prue’s wedding to Barry Two. Manchester. What Stella remembered best were the silver bells in Prue’s hair. Reminded her of reindeer, which was just what Prue had intended, she said, being a winter wedding. Joe and Janet weren’t there: Joe had written to Stella to say he couldn’t face such a meeting – her and Philip, him and Janet. She agreed, naturally. It would have been difficult.
It was at Prue’s wedding Mrs Lawrence made the suggestion that the girls should address her and Mr Lawrence by their Christian names. No such thing had ever happened at the farm, of course. Young girls did not then behave to their employers as they did today, assuming an unrequested intimacy Stella herself deplored. But by 1947, the wedding of Prue and Barry Two, Stella and Philip already married, the girls were grown up. It was appropriate they should now address the Lawrences as the friends they were, always would be. But Stella found it difficult. Faith and John: she had to remind herself, every time she wrote to them. Sometimes, on the rare occasions they met, she slipped back into the Mr and Mrs by mistake.