Authors: Lily Baxter
‘We’ll see about that. In fact, I’m beginning to think I’ll like it here after all. Let’s hope Mrs Proffitt doesn’t get better too quickly.’
Miranda had no answer to this. ‘We’d best go indoors and see what we can do to help.’
The moment they set foot in the house Miranda and Rita were sent to help Annie find enough clean linen to make up beds while Maggie allocated rooms, sorted out squabbling children and soothed anxious mothers with promises of tea and cakes. Miranda had overhead the last remark and smiled to herself, wondering if the ladies knew what they had let themselves in for.
‘You’ll have to share your room with Rita,’ Maggie said as they passed her on the stairs. ‘I’d have let
the
women use Jack’s room, but as he’s turning up like the proverbial bad penny they’ll have to double up in the guest rooms.’
Annie stuck her head over the banisters. ‘How many are we talking about, Mrs B? There seem to be dozens of kids running loose. Can’t their mothers keep them under control?’
‘They’ve just lost everything,’ Maggie said severely. ‘The least we can do is to help them rest and get themselves straight before they go on their way. But in answer to your question, there are seven mothers and eighteen children, although six of them are babes in arms. We can take drawers out of the tallboys to use as makeshift cots and I think there are some camp beds stored in the attic. We’ll need to bring them down and all the bedding you can find.’ She continued downstairs without waiting for anyone to question her.
Annie shook her head. ‘Madness. That’s what it is. You heard what your granny said, Miranda. You and Rita can fetch the camp beds and put them in the spare rooms and I’ll see to the bedding. I don’t trust you two in my linen cupboard, you’d muddle everything up.’
‘Come on, Rita.’ Miranda took the remainder of the stairs two at a time. She paused on the landing waiting for her to catch up.
‘How many rooms in this gaff?’ Rita demanded, staring around wide-eyed and obviously impressed. ‘It’s like a blooming hotel.’
‘There are six bedrooms and a boxroom on this floor and then up the next flight is my Uncle Jack’s room, that’s my favourite because it leads out to the widow’s walk. There are some smaller attic rooms, but they haven’t been used for years.’
Rita followed her along the landing and up the second flight of stairs. ‘What’s a widow’s walk when it’s at home?’
‘It’s just a balcony really, overlooking the sea. This house was built in Victorian times by a sea captain. His wife used to watch for his ship coming home from the widow’s walk.’
Rita frowned. ‘But if she was a widow her old man would be dead.’
‘I suppose a lot of the seafarers didn’t return, and I don’t think it’s a proper widow’s walk. As far as I know they’re more American than English, so I think it’s probably just a story that somebody made up to explain why they put a balcony at the top of this crazy old house.’
‘Let’s go and have a look,’ Rita said as they reached the second floor. ‘I want to see this widow’s walk.’
‘We haven’t got time. Maybe later.’
‘Spoilsport.’
Miranda spun round, glaring at her. ‘Look, Rita. I’m not mad about this either but if you’re going to stay here you’ll have to fit in and do what my grandparents say. It’s their house and they’ve taken you in.’
‘You too, don’t forget.’
‘I’m family.’
‘Thanks for reminding me that I haven’t got one.’
Miranda met her angry gaze and was instantly ashamed of her hasty words. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.’
‘You’ll be going back to your cosy home at the end of the summer holidays, but I’ll be stuck here with the old lady I’ve never met, if she ever gets out of hospital.’
‘I won’t as it happens. Our house was bombed and I’m going to have to stay here for the duration, but I know I’m lucky and I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn.’ Miranda held out her hand. ‘Come on, Rita. Let’s go and find these camp beds. I don’t like going in the rooms where the maids used to sleep, it’s spooky.’
‘You mean the house is haunted?’
‘Not that I know of, but I don’t like the feel of them. I’d hate to have been a servant in those days.’
‘It would have been better than starving in the gutter, mate.’ Rita strode on ahead to the next door, which had been left ajar, but as she pushed it open a furry mass leapt out at her and she fell backwards with a cry of fright.
‘It’s all right,’ Miranda said, chuckling as she bent down to stroke the irate cat. ‘It’s only Dickens. He must have come up here to escape from the kids.’
‘The bloody thing almost gave me a heart attack.’ Rita fanned herself with her hand, glaring at the cat
who
was now purring loudly and arching his back with pleasure as Miranda fussed over him.
‘Poor old boy. Did that nasty girl frighten you?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake stop drooling over the animal and let’s get this over.’ Rita hesitated in the doorway, peering into the room. ‘If you’re a ghost get out of me way. I’m coming in.’ She marched through the doorway. ‘There’s nothing in here but a lot of old junk and spiders’ webs.’
Eventually, after a lot of running up and down stairs carrying the ancient wood and canvas camp beds, they turned drawers into makeshift cots for the babies and the spare rooms became dormitories for the mothers and children. Miranda was relieved to find that her grandmother had not allocated her old room to anyone else, even though she would have to share it with Rita.
It was now late afternoon and the sunlight streamed through the large bay window that overlooked the back garden and the wide sweep of the bay. Rita flung herself down on one of the twin beds and closed her eyes. ‘I could kip for a week,’ she said, yawning. ‘Wake me up in time for tea.’
Miranda would have liked to unpack her cases and hang her clothes in the bird’s-eye walnut wardrobe, but she had barely begun when Annie poked her head round the door and informed them that their services were needed in the kitchen. It was a command rather than a request and Miranda knew
better
than to argue. She followed Annie downstairs with Rita trailing behind them.
The air in the kitchen was blue with cigarette smoke and filled with steam from the kettle singing away on the hob. Maggie had already made one pot of tea and was in the process of making another. She left this to Annie and instructed Miranda to give the children milk or lemonade, and Rita was left to dole out the remainder of the rock cakes and given a packet of Rich Tea biscuits to hand round.
Miranda was pleased to see that the women seemed to be in better spirits and beginning to talk things over between themselves. She felt genuinely sorry for them and it was obvious that they were all deeply distressed by their recent experiences, but the older children seemed to think the whole thing was a game, and fortified by food and drink they began to explore. Annie was struggling to cope with the air of a martyr about to be burnt at the stake, but Maggie appeared to be in her element. Miranda could only guess that the years her grandmother had spent as an army wife both in India and East Africa must have prepared her to rise to such an occasion, which she was doing magnificently.
‘Miranda.’ Maggie took her aside. ‘We have to think about feeding these people. I want you to go to the coach house and liberate the sack of potatoes that Elzevir delivered to your grandfather earlier this afternoon.’
‘But he needs them for his experiments.’
‘Feeding hungry mouths is more important.’ Maggie pressed a large iron key into her hand. ‘Go now while he’s taking his constitutional along the cliff top, and you’d best take Rita with you. A hundredweight of potatoes is too much for one girl to carry.’
Miranda unlocked the door but Rita was first inside the coach house, exclaiming in wonder. ‘I thought places like this was just in the flicks. What with haunted attics and this old ruin, you could make horror films here. Before Mum got sick we used to go to the pictures once a week. I loved
The Raven
with Boris Karloff, and then there was
Sweeny Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
with Tod Slaughter. I can’t get enough of creepy movies.’
‘It’s just an old coach house, only now it’s used as a garage and Grandpa’s workshop. You’ve got an over-active imagination, Rita.’ Miranda headed for the place where her grandfather kept the sack of potatoes, but when she realised that she was on her own she had to retrace her steps. She caught Rita peering beneath Chloe’s dust sheet.
‘Blooming hell! It’s a posh motor. Don’t tell me that your grandad drives this.’
‘He doesn’t and don’t touch. This is Chloe and she belongs to my Uncle Jack. Now leave her alone and help me with the sack. I can’t lift it by myself.’
Rita replaced the covers with a sigh. ‘I’d give me eye teeth for a ride in that thing. I wonder what else you got hidden in the Gothic mansion.’
‘Shut up,’ Miranda said, losing her patience. ‘For the last time, Rita, are you going to help me or not?’
Later that evening, when the evacuees had been fed on mashed potato and fried eggs, and the mothers had taken their children up to their respective rooms, the house was suddenly quiet. Miranda had left Rita unpacking her suitcase with strict instructions not to move her things. Sharing the room that had been hers for as long as she could remember was not something she would have agreed to had it not been forced upon her, but she kept telling herself that she must be kind to Rita, who had lost everything. She must not be mean and selfish. She did not want to end up like Auntie Eileen who had houseboys to wait on her hand and foot, and according to Annie expected the same treatment whenever she deigned to visit her parents.
Miranda made her way downstairs, moving as quietly as possible so that she would not disturb anyone. Clutched in her hand was the photograph of her father in its dented silver frame, the only personal item she had managed to salvage from her parents’ room before the chimney stack collapsed. She tiptoed to the drawing room and placed it on the mantelpiece next to a photo of her grandfather
in
his army uniform. The startling likeness of father and son brought a lump to her throat and she stood for a moment, gazing at the smiling images of the two most important men in her life. ‘Goodnight, Dad,’ she whispered, closing her eyes and screwing up her face as she had done as a child when she said her prayers at bedtime. ‘Please God keep my dad safe from harm, and Maman too, wherever she is now.’
The atmosphere in the room had become oppressive and she needed some fresh air. It was almost ten o’clock and the long summer evening was drawing to an end as she slipped out through the French windows onto the veranda. Deep shadows were engulfing the shrubbery, disguising the fact that there was an abundance of bindweed and brambles attempting to strangle the mock-orange and Weigela. Night-scented stocks filled the warm air with their sweetness, adding to the perfume of the tea roses in the flowerbed below the iron railings. Through the open windows of the small sitting room that was her grandmother’s retreat, Miranda could hear the strains of music emanating from the wireless. She could only guess that Granny had taken refuge there, and was probably snoozing in the saggy old chair that she refused to throw out, even though the upholstery had worn through on the arms and the springs beneath the cushions had long ago given up the ghost.
Grandpa was probably in his study where he
retired
every evening using the excuse that he had official papers to read before morning, although Miranda knew that he went there to smoke his pipe and enjoy a little peace and quiet. Granny disapproved of smoking, which demonstrated how far she was prepared to go in order to make the evacuees feel at home. No one in the family would normally have been allowed to smoke in the house, even Jack.
Miranda stood at the top of the flight of steps leading down to the garden and breathed deeply. The sweet scents of summer, mingling with the salty smell of the seaweed washed up on the beach, brought back happy memories of family holidays spent at Highcliffe. She felt her throat constrict as she remembered her father teaching her to swim in the warm shallows close to the beach, and her mother sunbathing on the sand with a straw hat shading her face. She recalled outings to the Swannery to see the newly hatched baby swans and cream teas in the surrounding villages. They had gone shrimping at Ferrybridge and taken long walks along the coastal path on hot summer afternoons, ending with a cream tea in a quaint tearoom. It all seemed like a dream now, far removed from the reality of barbed wire and concrete and the constant fear of air raids. A shelter had been dug into the lawn at the far side of the garden and with its spiky covering of turf it looked like a giant hedgehog slumbering in the lengthening shadows.
She
sighed, wondering if life would ever be the same again.
‘Hey there.’
Startled, she stifled an involuntary cry as a man emerged from the shrubbery.
Chapter Five
‘SORRY, DARLING. DID
I make you jump?’
‘Uncle Jack – you brute.’ She sank down on one of the steamer chairs, clutching her hand to her racing heart. ‘You scared me half to death.’
He took the steps two at a time and dropped his valise on the decking. ‘I didn’t know you’d be here, poppet.’
‘You’re in for it,’ she said, smiling and shaking her head. ‘I thought Granny was going to have a heart attack when she saw the telegram boy.’
‘I know. I’d had a few sherbets when I sent it and I realised too late that it was a damned silly thing to do, but it was gone midnight and I knew everyone would be tucked up in bed, and that I wouldn’t have time today.’
‘Why couldn’t you contact Granny this morning? What have you been up to?’
He perched on the veranda railing, tossing his uniform cap onto the rattan table. Taking a cigarette case from his pocket he flipped it open and offered it to her. ‘Have you acquired the habit yet?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I haven’t. Anyway,
please
be serious for a moment and tell me what’s going on.’
He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, exhaling with a satisfied sigh. ‘I needed that. Had to travel all the way in a non-smoking compartment; what we men do for love.’