Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis (37 page)

They knitted, or worked at a tufted wool rug, and chattered nineteen to the dozen. The schoolhouse living room had an old-fashioned kitchen range with a barred fire and two generous hobs on which a saucepan of soup, or a steaming kettle, kept hot. It was all very snug, and Jane was always reluctant to leave the circle of lamp light to make her way home along the dark lane, following the wavering pool of dim light from her torch.

Often, she went to Caxley to see the Bentleys, for Richard Bentley, an older brother of her college friend, became increasingly attentive. He owned a little car and worked in a Caxley bank.

As the months passed, he came to fetch Jane from the cottage more and more frequently. When they became engaged, Emily Davis was the first to hear the news.

She was genuinely delighted, though not surprised, and kissed young Jane soundly.

'And don't have a long engagement,' urged Emily.

'But we must save some money,' protested Jane, laughing at her vehemence.

'Don't wait too long. I did, and I lost him.'

Her face clouded momentarily and, for the first time, Jane realised that this cheerful little middle-aged woman must once have been young and in love, and then terribly wounded.

It was the first she had heard of the affair, although she learnt more later.

'I'm sorry,' she said, taking the older woman's hand impulsively. 'I had no idea.'

'Well, it's over and done with,' said Emily, with a sigh. 'But take my advice. Marry soon.'

The two planned to marry in the spring of the next year, and at Easter 1939, Jane was married from her parents' house in London.

After the honeymoon, they settled at the Springbourne cottage, intending to move nearer Caxley when something suitable came on the market. Jane had resigned her teaching post, but still saw a great deal of Emily and her pupils.

When war broke out in September of that year, young Richard Bentley, who was in the Territorial Army, went off to fight.

Jane resumed her job as infant teacher at Springbourne School, and went to Caxley Station, with her headmistress, to collect forty or so evacuee schoolchildren who were to share Springbourne school for the duration of hostilities.

The war years had a dream-like quality for Jane Bentley. At times, it was more of a nightmare than a dream, but always there was this pervading feeling of unreality.

Had there ever been such a golden September, she wondered, as that first month of the war?

Day after day dawned cloudless and warm. Thistledown floated in the soft breezes. Butterflies, drunk with nectar, clung bemused to the buddleia flowers, or opened and shut their wings in tranced indolence upon the early Michaelmas daisies.

It was impossible to realise that just across the English Channel terror and violence held sway. At Springbourne one might have been swathed in a golden
COCOON
as the harvest was gathered and the downs shimmered in the heat haze.

Of course, at Springbourne School there was unusual activity as the newcomers settled down, amicably enough, with their native hosts.

Two teachers had accompanied the evacuees, one young, one middle-aged.

The middle-aged headmistress was a tough stringy individual with a voice as rough as a nutmeg scraper. She had run a Girl Guides troop for years, played hockey for her county and had the unsubtle team-spirit approach to life of a hearty adolescent.

She was billeted with Emily in the school house, and the two got on pretty well, both appreciating the other's honesty and concern for their charges. Miss Farrer, Emily discovered, was a whirlwind of a teacher, and a strict disciplinarian.

The younger woman, Miss Knight, was a different kettle of fish altogether, and poor Jane, whose spare bedroom she occupied, suffered grievously.

Molly Knight was one who thrived on emotion. She travelled from one dramatic crisis to another as a traveller in a desert moves from oasis to oasis. If the war could not supply enough material for sensation—and at that stage it was remarkably dull—Molly Knight created excitement from the little world about her. She was a mischief-maker, mainly because of this desire for sensation, and Jane found her particularly exhausting.

'What can I do?' she asked Emily one day, in despair. 'I try to look upon it as my contribution to the war effort, but I really can't face Molly breaking into my room at midnight to tell me how atrociously the Germans are treating their prisoners, and giving me a blow-by-blow account of her reactions to some stupid piece of propaganda.'

'I've been thinking about it,' replied Emily. 'If Miss Farrer's willing, I suggest they have your cottage, and you come here. How do you think that would work?'

Jane, despite a certain reluctance to leave the cottage, fell in with this plan, and for some time the two establishments were thus constituted. It made things easier in every way.

As the phoney war, as it came to be called, continued, a number of the children and their parents returned to London. One who did not, much to Emily's and Jane's pleasure, was a particularly attractive eight-year-old called Billy Dove.

He was a red-haired freckled boy, quick and intelligent. There was no doubt in Emily's mind that he would go on to a grammar school in time.

He was the only child of a quiet little mouse of a woman, and the two were billeted in a cottage not far from the school. The father was in the Navy, patrolling off the coast of Ireland, it was believed.

Mother and son were devoted. Mrs Dove was a great knitter, and young Billy's superb collection of jerseys was much admired. She did not mix much with the other women, although Billy was popular with the other children, frequently organising their games.

One day in late November the tragedy occurred. By now the weather had broken, and all day the wind had howled round Springbourne School and rain had lashed the windows. Playtime was passed indoors, in a flurry of well-worn comics on the desks among the milk bottles.

By afternoon, a fierce gale was blowing, ferocious enough to satisfy even Molly Knight's passion for excitement.

'Just look at the postman!' she exclaimed to Jane, as they watched the weather through the rain-spattered window. 'He can hardly walk against it!'

They watched him struggle up the path to Billy Dove's door, letter in hand. Water streamed from his black oilskin cape, and every step sent drops flying from his Wellington boots.

The children were sent home at the right time, through the murky fury of the storm, with strict orders 'not to loiter'. Emily and Jane returned to the school house for tea, looking forward to a peaceful evening by the fire.

But at eight o'clock, an agitated neighbour arrived to say that Mrs Dove was in a dead faint across her table, with her wrists dripping blood, and that young Billy was nowhere to be found.

'You go and ring the doctor,' said Emily to Jane, 'while I run along to Mrs Dove.' They flung on their coats and hurried away on their errands.

The scene at Mrs Dove's, though frightening enough, was not quite as horrifying as the neighbour's breathless description had led Emily to believe.

There was blood upon the tablecloth, on the floor, and upon Mrs Dove's hand-knitted jumper, but the slashed wrists dripped no longer for, luckily, the poor woman's attempt at suicide had been unsuccessful. Emily had snatched up her mother's smelling salts on her way out, and now waved the pungent bottle before the pale face.

The neighbour found some rum in the cupboard, and when, at last, Mrs Dove came to, she and Emily made her sip a little rum and hot water.

'What ever made you do it?' asked the neighbour, bewildered.

Emily shook her head. This was no time to torture Mrs Dove with whys and wherefores. They must bide their time.

Although conscious, the woman said nothing, but sat, head sunk upon the bloodied jumper, in silence.

But when the doctor arrived, she stirred and pointed to a letter which had fallen to the floor. He read it, and passed it to Emily, without speaking.

It was a brief communication—that which Jane and Molly had seen the postman delivering that afternoon. It said that James Alan Dove was missing presumed killed.

'I'd like to have her in hospital overnight,' said the doctor. 'She's lost a good deal of blood, and is in a severe state of shock.'

'I understand,' said Emily. 'The boy is missing. I'll ring the police and start searching myself. He can stay the night at the school house when we find him.'

'By far the best thing,' agreed the doctor. If only more women were like Emily Davis, he thought, turning to his patient!

The memory of that night stayed with Jane Bentley for the rest of her life. The two of them set out through the storm with only the faintest glimmer from torches, dimmed by tissue paper over the glass in accordance with black-out regulations, to guide them.

'We'll stick together,' said Emily. 'And keep shouting his name. Not that we stand much chance of being heard in this wind.'

'Which way?' asked Jane, at Mrs Dove's gate.

'Towards Caxley. He may have had some muddled idea of catching a train. Anyway, he wouldn't make for the downs in this weather. There's not a shred of shelter there.'

They splashed along the valley lane, past the school. The water gurgled on each side of the road, sometimes fanning across the full width where the surface tilted. Above their heads the wind roared in the branches, clashing them together and scattering twigs and leaves below. The elephantine grey trunks of the beech trees were streaked with rivulets of rainwater.

Jane's shoes squelched at every step. She could feel the water between her toes, and wished she had had Emily's foresight and had thrust her feet into Wellington boots.

The little headmistress kept up a brisk pace. Every now and again she stopped, and the two would cry:

'Billy! Billy Dove! Billy!'

But their voices were drowned in the turmoil about them, and Jane began to wonder if the whole venture would have to be abandoned.

She followed in Emily's wake envying the older woman's unflagging energy.

'Are you aiming at anywhere particular?' she shouted above the din. Emily nodded.

'Bennett's barn and the chicken houses,' she responded. Jane knew that these buildings were Edgar Bennett's—that same Edgar, so she had recently learnt—who had jilted the indomitable little woman before her, so many years ago.

They splashed onward. Now the lane ran close by the little river. The watercress was now large and coarse, and swept this way and that by the torrent of water rushing through it. Who would have thought that the pretty summer trickle of brook, overhung with willows and long grasses, could become such a snarling leaping force, carrying all before it!

Emily turned left, and struck uphill along a rough track now streaming with chalky water from the downs. Some hundred yards up the hill, she left the track and beat her way, head down against the onslaught of rain, towards two large hen houses standing side by side in the field. Jane followed doggedly.

'Stand round here. There's more shelter,' said Emily. 'I'll only open the door a crack, otherwise the hens will be out. They're kittle-cattle.'

It was the first time Jane had heard this phrase. She savoured it now, watching Emily's small hand fumbling with the wooden catch of the door.

'Billy! Billy Dove!' she called through the chink. A pencil of light from the dimmed torch searched every cranny of the house.

There were a few squawks of alarm from the hens, and a preliminary rumbling from the rooster before taking suitable action against those who disturbed his rest. But there was no human voice to be heard.

'No luck,' said Emily, shutting the door, and squelching across the grass to the next.

They were just as unlucky here.

'We'll try the barn,' said Emily, tucking wet strands of hair under her sodden head scarf. 'Back to the road, Jane.'

Jane found herself stumbling along, almost in a state of collapse. She was not as strong in constitution as Emily, and this evening's tragedy had taken its toll. She longed for bed, for warmth, for shelter from the cruel buffeting of the weather, and for the relief of finding the missing child.

She did not have to wait long. At the barn door, Emily motioned her forward. Together they moved inside, out of the wind and rain. It was quiet in here, and fragrant with the summer smell of hay.

Emily pushed aside the wet tissue paper from the torch, and a stronger light came to rest on a dark bundle curled up in an outsize nest in one corner of the barn.

Emily knelt down beside the sleeping child. His eyes were tightly shut, his red hair dark with moisture and clinging to his forehead. The cheeks were blotched and his eyelids swollen with crying. But he was unharmed.

'Billy,' whispered Emily. The child woke, and sat up abruptly. There was no preliminary stretching or yawning. Billy Dove was awake in an instant, and remembered all that had brought him to this place in blind panic. Emily knew how it would be.

'Mummy?' he asked, turning anxious eyes upon Emily. She took one of his grimy hands in hers.

'She's well again,' she told him. 'The doctor is looking after her.'