‘
There’s been an accident at your house stop
,’ she read. ‘
Come home stop Thrower
.’
‘An accident?’ Tess said stupidly. Waves of relief were breaking over her head, making her feel almost as dizzy and disorientated as had her fear of bad news about Mal. ‘What sort of accident? I don’t understand.’
‘Nor me,’ Sue admitted, frowning. ‘Stop Thrower doing what?’
Tess laughed again a little more strongly. ‘No, it just means come home at once and it’s signed Thrower. Oh dear, I wonder what’s happened? The Sugdens won’t be too pleased if I disappear when I’ve just had a free weekend and am taking tomorrow off for the wedding.’
Susan turned to the telegram boy, who had just noticed the manure clogging the soles of his boots and was picking at it with a piece of stick.
‘Can you tell them she’ll be home as soon as she can get? We can’t be more definite than that until we’ve spoken to the Sugdens.’
‘Don’t matter,’ the boy said indifferently. ‘No one ha’n’t paid for a reply.’
‘Then buzz off,’ Susan said. ‘Why are you hanging about? I thought you were waiting for a reply, naturally.’
‘I’m waiting ’cos some people tip me a bob, or a kick,’ the boy said hopefully. ‘That’s a long way to cycle, out here.’
‘Oh . . . well, we’re in our working clothes, we don’t carry money,’ Sue was beginning when Tess dived a hand into the pocket of her overalls and produced a sixpenny piece.
‘There you are,’ she said. ‘It’s all I’ve got.’
‘Ta,’ the boy said. He turned his heavy bicycle round and set off once more across the yard. ‘Hope no one’s dead.’
‘Nasty little bugger,’ Susan said, leading her friend towards the kitchen door. ‘I wonder what’s happened, though? Is it your sister? Only if so, why didn’t your mother telegram instead of the Thrower person? Oh, Tess suppose it is your mother – and she’s getting married tomorrow!’
‘Can’t be; I was with them both last night, remember,’ Tess said as they re-entered the kitchen. ‘An accident could mean anything. If Marianne or Cherie had been hurt, surely Mrs Thrower would have said? No, it must be . . . well, an accident.’
But when Tess gave her employer the telegram, Mrs Sugden was in no doubt where Tess’s loyalties lay. ‘You’ve got to go home, my dear,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you round to Barton in the car, I want a word with Mr Chapman about some more poultry corn.’ She turned to Susan. ‘Will you finish off making the breakfast, dear? And when Molly comes down tell her she can finish the yard. Harold’s taking the cows out, I suppose?’
‘That’s right,’ Susan said. She turned to Tess. ‘You’ll have some brekker before you go, won’t you?’
‘Yes, we might as . . . no, on second thoughts, telegrams aren’t sent lightly by people like Mrs Thrower,’ Mrs Sugden said, suddenly making up her mind. ‘Run upstairs, dear, and slip out of those overalls and we’ll leave at once. If there’s nothing we can do then we can be back in half an hour or so.’
‘Good luck, Tess,’ Susan said as Tess began to run up the stairs. ‘I’ll make you a couple of bacon sandwiches, you and Mrs Sugden can eat them in the car. I do hope you find it’s a false alarm, but if you need us, we’ll come over as soon as we can, me and Moll.’
‘Isn’t everyone good?’ Tess said as Mrs Sugden drove the old Morris along the quiet country lanes. ‘It’s most awfully kind of you to bring me home, Mrs Sugden, when you’re so busy. But it’s not far now, this is Deeping Lane and the house is just . . . my God!’
They had rounded the corner and the house should have stood before them, serene against the backdrop of the trees and the distant Broad. It stood there all right, but it was . . . lopsided. And there was something wrong with the roof. Even as they watched, a curl of smoke drifted lazily from the ragged, oddly darkened thatch.
‘You’ve been bombed!’ Mrs Sugden said, stopping the car with such a jolt that Tess bumped her nose on the windscreen. ‘Oh my dear, you’ve been bombed! What are those people doing? Ought we to help?’
Tess jumped out of the car and ran towards the house with Mrs Sugden close on her heels. Now that she was nearer she could see that the upper windows were glassless and the thatch had been partially burned off. Various Throwers were bustling in and out carrying furniture, rugs, books, crockery. They cast these objects on the front lawn and returned at once to the house. Tess saw the familiar shapes of dining-room chairs which she had polished only yesterday; some were water darkened, some scorched, blackened. A smell of burning hung in the air, and another smell, which Tess could not identify.
‘What on earth . . .?’ Tess gasped. Dickie Thrower emerged from the front door, tugging after him a feather mattress scorched all along one side. Tess went over to him and tugged his sleeve.
‘Dickie, what’s happened? Was it a bomb? And where’s your mother?’
‘Oh, Tess, in’t it awful? There was a ’splosion, the thatch went alight . . . Mum’s now a-comin’, she’s been in the back kitchen, tryin’ to get the cookery books an’ the pans an’ that sorted.’
Tess went towards the house, only to be shouted back by Mr Thrower, who was on a ladder, clawing with a peculiar instrument at the still-smouldering thatch.
‘Keep away, gal Tess,’ he shouted. ‘Bess won’t be a minute. She’ll tell you wha’s been happenin’.’
And sure enough, presently Mrs Thrower came round the side of the house with an armful of cookery books and smiled wearily at Tess. She was streaked with dirt and her eyes were bloodshot, but her smile was a comfort.
‘Well, I hope my telegram didn’t scare you, my woman,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I knew you’d come as soon as you could. They’ve took Miz Delamere to hospital, young Cherie went with her. I din’t see her but it’s to be hoped she in’t too bad. House is a rare mess, though. As for the spare room . . . well, words fail me.’
‘Oh, Mrs Thrower, thanks for the telegram,’ Tess said. ‘But if it was a bomb . . .’
‘It weren’t no bomb,’ Mrs Thrower said gently. ‘I had a word wi’ Cherie, an’ from what she said they’re both lucky to be alive, love. That seem your stepma went into the spare room late last night with a candle, to tek another look at what she’re got in there. She wanted olive oil to fry something or other for that there weddin’ party.’
‘Oh, that bloody hoard!’ Tess said. ‘But why . . .?’
‘Cherie telled me she kept some petrol for Mr Maurice in big cans,’ Mrs Thrower said. ‘And that cookin’ oil was in big cans, too. She reckon your stepma must have been openin’ cans to check which was what, an’ she knocked agin one of ’em, dropped the candle . . . an’ it were petrol and went up with a whoosh. It blew the winders out, destroyed just about everything in the spare room an’ your room, an’ burnt half the roof off – the beams ha’ gone as well as the thatch – before the neighbours could do a thing. I come runnin’, all of us did, Ropes an’ all. The Ropes phoned the fire brigade an’ the ambulance, but I were round the back cartin’ water from the Broad when they got your stepma out. Cherie was downstairs, a-doin’ of her homework, when it happened. She couldn’t get up the stairs for the flames so she come rushin’ out . . . our Podge gave an eye to her till the ambulance people come.’
‘And – and Marianne? Is she much hurt?’
‘I don’t rightly know,’ Mrs Thrower said. ‘But my Reggie say she was outside the spare room, agin the banisters. Not conscious, I’d say. Anyway, the ambulance people took her off to Norwich right quick. So soon as it was light this mornin’ – we’re bin fightin’ the fire an’ tryin’ to save what we could all night long – I telegrammed you. Ropes sent it,’ she added conscientiously, ‘but I writ it. I didn’t want to fright you, but I wanted you home . . . an’ you come, dear, thank God.’
‘And by the sound of it she’d better go again,’ Mrs Sugden said. She had been listening anxiously, standing close to Tess with a hand on her arm. ‘I’ll run her into the city at once – Mrs Delamere’s at the Norfolk and Norwich, I take it? Burns are painful and frightening, even small ones. Tess’s place is with her mother and her younger sister now.’
‘Oh, thank you, Mrs Sugden, you are so kind,’ Tess said gratefully. ‘Poor Marianne – and poor little Cherie, having to cope alone all night! I wonder why she didn’t ring me herself?’
‘Too confused, I dare say,’ Mrs Thrower said. ‘I knew she were in good hands, do I’d have made my way to the city. And if we hadn’t been here, my woman, I mek no bones about it, you wouldn’t even have half a house! The fire brigade didn’t arrive until the early hours – not their fault, they were at another fire – so it was Broadswater and Broadsmen what saved the Old House.’
‘Thanks, Mrs Thrower,’ Tess said. She hugged the older woman hard. ‘And from the look of you, you could do with a rest. Go home and have a cup of tea and some breakfast; I bet you’ve not eaten this morning.’
Mrs Thrower’s face was white, her eyes scarlet pits, but she returned Tess’s hug heartily. ‘I’m a tough old bird, it’ll tek more’n fightin’ a fire an’ missin’ a breakfast to disturb me. Off with you now, my woman, an’ remember, where there’s life there’s hope.’
All the way to the hospital Mrs Sugden chatted gently and cheerfully, but Tess’s apprehension grew and grew and in the end she had to talk about what she would find when she reached the Norfolk and Norwich.
‘Marianne was right in line when the explosion happened, by the sound of it,’ she said as they entered the city suburbs. ‘She must have been hanging over the petrol can or the candle wouldn’t have dropped into it. Oh, Mrs Sugden, do you thinks she’s alive still?’
Mrs Sugden shot a quick look at her, then changed down to turn a corner. ‘I don’t know, dear,’ she said at last. ‘But miracles have happened. Your friend said that Mrs Delamere was hurled out of the room by the explosion. Perhaps she may have escaped relatively lightly.’
‘I pray she has,’ Tess said. ‘I
pray
she’s all right. Tomorrow – tomorrow was to be her wedding day.’
Mrs Sugden accompanied Tess into the hospital but said she would not go up to the ward.
‘I’ll stay down here, in the entrance hall, until you’re ready to leave,’ she said. ‘I know the authorities don’t encourage too many visitors to ill patients and we don’t yet know how ill your stepmother is. But don’t worry, I’ll wait.’
‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ Tess said distractedly. ‘Aren’t they busy? I can’t see Cherie anywhere, so I suppose she’s still with Marianne.’
The hospital staff were very busy, but as soon as Tess said who she was an orderly was sent to take her to the Burns Unit, where she was put into a waiting room and told that someone would be with her presently.
Overawed by the smell of disinfectant and sickness, Tess perched on the edge of a chair and picked up an old pre-war magazine. She was leafing through the pages, her mind in a terrible state of apprehension, when the door shot open. Cherie stood framed in the doorway. She gave a convulsive sob and ran straight into Tess’s arms.
‘Oh Tess, I’m so glad you’re here! I couldn’t ring, I didn’t have any money, and I knew I should be with Maman until she woke up. Tess, she’s . . . she’s . . . awfully ill and I think she hurts badly. She moans, sometimes.’
Tess winced and was beginning to question Cherie when a nurse, following at a more leisurely pace, came into the room in Cherie’s wake. She smiled at Tess.
‘Miss Delamere? Your mother is very poorly, very poorly indeed, but we’re doing everything we can to help her. Your sister will tell you that she looks . . . rather poorly, but . . . would you like to see her?’
‘Yes, please,’ Tess said. The nurse looked uneasily from her to Cherie and back again.
‘It’s . . . rather upsetting. Your sister’s told you?’
‘Yes,’ Tess said. ‘It’s all right, I know a bit about burns.’
‘Oh, well that’s all right then,’ the nurse said, suddenly brisk. ‘Come with me.’
They followed her down a long, bleak corridor and into a tiny, bleak room. There were two beds but only one was occupied. Tess looked at the figure on the bed and recoiled. Was
this
Marianne? This blackened, hairless creature, hung about with tubes and bottles, lying still as death under the covers, with her gash of a mouth open, revealing that she had a bloody gap where teeth had once been?
Tess stood very still, trying to see a resemblance between what lay on the bed and her lively, attractive stepmother. But before she could speak Cherie’s hand crept into hers.
‘She looks poorly, doesn’t she, Tess?’ the younger girl murmured. ‘But that’s just dirt and things . . . she’ll be all right when they clean her up, won’t she? Only . . . she knocked her poor teeth out, the doctor says he’ll give her a nice lovely bright new set, so that’ll be all right, won’t it?’
‘That’ll be fine,’ Tess whispered back . . . and the figure on the bed moaned, a cracked and terrible sound which made her flesh crawl. ‘Oh poor, poor Marianne!’
‘Oh yes, poor Maman, but her left hand is all right,’ Cherie said eagerly. ‘I held her hand for hours and hours, only the nurse said I should have something to eat because Maman didn’t know I was holding her hand so I went to the canteen with her. Only, it was odd, Tess, but I couldn’t eat anything at all, and you know how greedy I am as a rule. I had some milk, but not even a bite of bread.’
‘Never mind, chick, we’ll go together presently and you’ll eat when you have me for company, I’m sure,’ Tess said. ‘Look, after we’ve eaten we’ll have to leave the hospital for a bit. We’ll have to give Uncle Phil and Auntie May a ring and ask if we can stay with them whilst Maman’s in hospital, and then we’ll go back to the Old House and pick up some night things, clean undies, shoes . . . that sort of thing.’
‘Why? Can’t we go home and come into the city each day, once Maman’s better?’ Cherie said, looking puzzled. ‘I don’t know Auntie May or Uncle Phil terribly well, I’d rather be at home.’
Tess remembered that Cherie hadn’t seen the house in daylight, probably hadn’t given the damage a thought. Her mother was all she cared about. Rightly, Tess thought, glancing cringingly at the figure on the bed. Oh poor, poor Marianne!
‘Darling, the house is badly fire-damaged, we can’t go back there for a bit. It’s pretty crowded already at Willow Tree Farm but I’m sure the Sugdens will find a corner for you until – until the house is mended, but for now, just whilst Maman is so ill, we ought to be nearer. On call.’