The Watercress Girls (16 page)

‘It’s the only part of me that’s fashionable nowadays! Which makes me think of Plymouth, and Sybil and Rufus. I do hope things are not as serious as Evie thinks.’

The cable came less than a week later: REGRET SAD NEWS. RUFUS PASSED AWAY TWO DAYS AGO. WRITING SOON. LOVE SYBIL.

‘I’m glad they resolved their differences,’ Griff said to Mattie, ‘and enjoyed a few happy years together.’

C
hristabel and Walter were spending the weekend at the Plough. Fanny and Ronnie’s new baby daughter was to be christened on Sunday. Evie and Mattie were little Sophy’s godmothers, Christabel was standing in as proxy for Mattie. This made good sense, as Walter was the baby’s godfather.

Sophia was thrilled to have the baby named after her. Will gently reminded her that she mustn’t neglect their three grandsons, on whom she had doted until now.

‘Let Evie hold her, she’s used to babies, unlike me,’ Christabel
whispered
in Fanny’s ear, as parents and godparents walked to the font for the baptism.

The baby was asleep until the holy water was poured over the crown of her head. By then, she’d been passed, wrapped in her crocheted cobwebby shawl, to the parson. She gave an indignant yell. Everyone present approved her reaction – part of the tradition. Duly named, and dried, Sophy was returned to her proud parents.

‘Mattie should have been here,’ Christabel said to Evie, as they walked back to the house together. Christabel clicked along in
high-heeled
shoes, while Evie strode out in her comfortable T-bar-strapped sandals.

Evie glanced at her. Christabel was very much a city girl, she thought, with Marcel-waved hair, smart grey-flannel suit with velvet cuffs and collar, a wide-brimmed hat and sheer silk stockings. Quite a contrast to herself, in her good school skirt and plain cream blouse. ‘All good
experience
. Has it inspired you?’ she asked frankly.

‘No … Walter’s mum keeps dropping heavy hints, but … you can’t have two women in one kitchen. The truth is, Evie, despite the recession, I’m really doing well in my current job, and I’m in line for promotion. I’d never have achieved that at the emporium, in Plymouth – though I’ll always be grateful to Mr Fullilove for giving me my first chance. There is another reason, which I hope will show that I am not altogether selfish—’

‘Oh, Christabel, I’d never think that of you!’ Evie interrupted. ‘I know how you cared for your mother and put her first, taking on responsibility at an early age—’

‘Doesn’t that sound like you, too, Evie? I don’t regret those years, for one moment. But my mother’s doctor warned me that her illness could well be inherited, if not by me, perhaps by a daughter, if I had one. I discussed it with Walter, and we agreed, we shouldn’t risk it.’

‘Well, I’m glad you were able to talk about it. How is Walter doing at work?’

‘He finds selling insurance dull at times, but it is a job. Badly paid, but necessary. We are lucky to be in full employment. How about you?’

‘I know I am in the right profession. I’m happy!’

‘I wish you could find a partner in life – someone like dear Walter, or Griff!’

‘As they are both taken there’s not much chance of that!’ Evie smiled.

Christabel stumbled, held on to her friend’s helping hand. She guessed that Evie still carried a torch for Walter, as she did for Griff, despite her contented, loving marriage. Neither of us will say, she thought, but it brings the two of us closer together.

The papers back home were full of ‘the gathering storm’ in Europe. On the prairies summer storms at night were frequent, as they were to be all through the thirties, rolling in from the west around dusk, causing fear and havoc until the early hours. The sky was rent by the electric zigzag of forked lightning and the thunder exploded like gunfire, reminiscent of trench warfare to any veterans. The sheet lightning, however, without the rumbling thunder, was even more terrifying and unexpected.

Bert came down white-faced from his loft room one morning. ‘I couldn’t help thinking: my bed is against the chimney wall and that lightning might flash down the flue and strike the iron bedstead,’ he said. ‘My, I was
quaking
!’

‘Megan came rushing into our room and dived under our covers,’ Mattie said ruefully. ‘I guess it’s my fault because my mother was
terrified
of storms too, and I feel compelled to carry out the same rituals as she did, when I was a child. Covering the mirrors and making sure all the cutlery is shut away in the drawer.… Scissors, too. Anything made of shiny metal, Mother said, could attract the lightning. We were told to keep away from water, even the washing-up! All the windows and doors were shut.

‘Mother was certainly right about one thing, when she said, “A storm will turn the cream.” I don’t suppose I will be making ice cream today, eh?’

‘Ooh!’ Megan said reproachfully.

Griff was rubbing his tired eyes. He hadn’t had much sleep either. He’d ventured out a couple of times to check the cows, and to bring the terrified yard dog into the kitchen. ‘This darn drought worries me – if we don’t get some rain soon to dampen things down, there’ll be dust storms. The wind will see to that.’

He and Bert ate their porridge standing up and, after gulping down their tea, they departed to see if there was any damage to the barns.

They were lucky on this occasion, but Gretchen reported later that Kjetl’s father had not been so fortunate. ‘Their big barn was struck – no lightning-rod conductor, he says. It didn’t catch fire like another of their barns did a few weeks ago, when they had to rescue the horses and my dad and the boys rushed over to help put out the flames. Anyway, this time the flash hit a rafter and travelled down a stud against which Kjetl’s dad had leaned his pitchfork. It split the handle clean down the middle. At least the women didn’t have to form a human chain with buckets to douse that! Kjetl’s dad said that handle was over twenty years old, and had been good enough for another twenty!’

Megan was not the only one who missed Bert when his patience was rewarded with an offer of a four-day working week as an engineer on the railway. Gretchen kept asking, ‘Heard how Bert is getting on?’ so Mattie copied out his address for her and suggested, ‘Why don’t you write and ask him yourself?’

This coincided with the onset of colder weather and a slump in the sales of ice cream, so Mattie resumed her dairy duties and deliveries. Tin Lizzie conked out and Harry at the garage, advised Griff to
part-exchange
her for a nippy little truck, which had room for a couple of passengers on the front seat, and would transport their products. Mattie learned to drive in a week. The wagon horses still had a role to play on the farm.

Megan liked visiting the garage. It was a square building which Harry had put up himself next to the general store. He lived in an apartment over the store, which had originally belonged to his parents. On the
forecourt
was a single gas pump, and when Harry was in the pit examining the underside of a motor, and a horn sounded, Griff would leave his desk in the cramped office at the side and ‘fill ’em up’, as he put it.

‘Don’t touch that,’ he warned his inquisitive daughter, whether it was the spike on which the bills were impaled, or the precarious pile of oil cans in a corner.

The rafters were used as repositories for various bits of small
equipment
. Harry, a kindly, middle-aged chap who wore greasy overalls and a flat cap, was amazingly athletic. He climbed a swaying ladder to retrieve items and sometimes swung perilously by one hand or hooked
his knees round a rafter to reach what he was after. Harry was a jolly bachelor, but he had a twinkle in his eye when ladies were around. He was light on his feet at the church social dances, so he was popular in the Paul Jones. He hadn’t married, he said, because, ‘Who would put up with all the dirty washing, and all the noise, oil spills and smells?’

Megan agreed that the smells in the general stores, from sacks of meal to jars of mint humbugs were nicer! Her favourite thing was watching Mattie press dollops of yellow ice cream into cones. She waited her turn, until the queue of kids was satisfied.

The hamlet was expanding all the time, with more folk settling and building there. It was fast becoming a small town, with a bandstand and a war memorial, in the form of a cross, dedicated to those who died in the Great War. Half a dozen men were honoured belatedly. The local newspaper opened a one-room office, with a barber’s shop above, and Harry’s nephew had smartened up an old property into a café, which was proving very popular.

There were no evergreens on the prairie, but plenty of deciduous trees, many of which reminded Mattie of home, like ash, box elder and willow. The willows, together with cottonwoods, were always near water. Mattie loved to watch the lofty silver-maple trees in her garden, planted by their predecessors, from her kitchen window, when she was standing at the sink. Silvery leaves shimmered, twirled and danced in the breeze, as if in time to the music from the wireless. Mattie thought that a wonderful invention!

There was one last foraging expedition to gather wild fruits that fall. Griff and Mattie hurried through their morning chores in order to keep their promise to Megan and Gretchen to take a picnic lunch up the
hillside
.

‘Why? Why’?’ Megan demanded to know, when she saw things that caught her imagination on their walk to Hickory Hill, known as Old Hick. She pointed out the rock piles which appeared to have been placed haphazardly on the outer edges of the fields.

‘Ask Dad,’ Mattie said, with a sigh.

Griff told his daughter. ‘I’m not sure if you can understand it yet, but you will, when you learn about it at school. There were ancient glaciers – I’ll show you a picture in a book when we get back home – and these great blocks of ice melted and the rocks were left. The settlers had to dig them out of the ground before they could plough it. That’s how they got piled up like this.’

Gretchen had been listening attentively too. ‘You know my friend Kjetl? Well, he was ploughing with the horses once on his dad’s farm and the plough hit a
huge
rock and he was thrown in the air, but somehow
he landed back in the seat and not on the ground. Every bone in his body was jarred. His dad said the same thing had happened to him when he was a boy, so lightning
does
strike twice in the same place—’

‘You said it was the plough, not lightning!’ Megan interrupted.

‘Something I
do
know,’ Mattie said now. ‘The Indians found a lot of uses for these rocks before the settlers piled ’em up. They made hammers, axes, and ground seeds with the rocks. My friend Treesa, at Moose Jaw, told me that. When the Indians moved from place to place, before the pioneers came, they used the stones to hold down the edges of their tepees. I haven’t seen one yet, but they say there are circles of stones to show where they camped.’

They had arrived at the slopes. Nimble Megan ran ahead, pausing only to pluck a few currants still clinging to the shrubs, and eating them, because she couldn’t wait for Gretchen to come up with the basket.

‘Don’t touch that prickly cactus!’ Mattie called out in warning. She knew her daughter would find those smooth oval berries tempting now that they had turned from green to a ripe red.

‘You
can
eat ’em,’ Gretchen asserted, ‘but they’re all sticky jelly inside and full of seeds. Don’t worry, Missus, I heard Megan yelp when she got too near them spines….’

Megan knew better than to pick the little wild plums. The locals said they were poisonous, but Mattie suspected that they were tasteless, with tough skins like the ones back home. They weren’t worth canning. ‘Leave them for the wildlife,’ as Mattie said.

They ate their cheese-and-pickle sandwiches and ginger cake and drank tea from the flask. Megan was reprimanded for throwing her crusts into the bushes. She had an answer, of course. ‘I’m feeding the wildlife, Mommy.’

While Mattie and Gretchen cleared up the remains of the picnic, Griff and Megan went exploring further up Old Hick.

‘When the snow comes,’ Griff told his daughter, ‘We’ll come up here with a sledge and slide down all the way to the bottom!’

‘Promise, Dad,
promise
!’

‘All right, I promise. But in return, you must help your mom fill the baskets, eh?’

He watched as she hurried ahead, to fulfil her part of the bargain. Megan will be five this Christmas, he thought, and it won’t seem long before she starts school, after that. Maybe I’ll never have a little son to work with me on the farm, but Bert was right, when he said Megan is a girl and a half! She takes after my lovely Mattie, of course….

Griff felt in his inside pocket for his sketchpad and charcoal. He was in the habit of ‘capturing the moment’ where his daughter was concerned. They had quite a gallery of sketches pinned to the living-room
walls. Mattie had been inspired by these to write a diary of ‘the dairy on the prairie’ as she called it. ‘One day,’ she said, ‘we’ll put our pictures and prose together and make a book!’

Later, when they were in bed, and Megan was fast asleep, still with traces of purple from the squashed berries on her hands and round her mouth, for as Mattie said, ‘They are just like indelible ink! You need several good washes to remove them,’ Griff hugged Mattie close and whispered: ‘It was a good day, wasn’t it? One for the diary!’

‘Mmm,’ she agreed.

‘D’you ever regret coming here, Mattie?’

‘Never,’ she said firmly.

‘We haven’t been able to keep our promise to visit home. It’ll be nine years next spring since we left Southampton, after all.’

‘They understand, Griff. We can’t afford to take time off work.’

‘I know – but I don’t like not to keep my word.…’

‘You’re a very honourable person, Griff, and I love you for it,’ she said.

T
hey always looked forward to the Christmas mail. There were birthday cards for Megan, of course, cards with warm greetings from family and friends, the ones from back home depicting snow scenes, not unlike here!

Mattie particularly enjoyed catching up with the once-a-year
correspondents
. This included Grace, with news of her family and recent changes in circumstances.

Mattie sighed as she read the last paragraph of Grace’s letter. Such a pity, she thought, that Grace and Mungo had met at the wrong time. Their attraction for each other had been immediate and strong, but they resisted temptation to take things further. Yet, life had obviously taken a positive turn and Grace and her family were doing well.

‘Good for Tommy,’ Griff said, when he heard about his ambitions.

The mail arrived at breakfast time. Mattie put the birthday cards and
a couple of parcels addressed to Megan to one side. She must wait a few days! There was a letter from Sybil. Mattie handed it to Griff. ‘You open that one!’

Griff glanced at the content, showed surprise, then read aloud:

‘Well, what do you think?’ Griff asked Mattie.

‘I think we should do all we can this end to make it possible. I know she says to think it over, but that’s my immediate reaction, and yours, I’m sure.’

‘Thank you,’ he said quietly. ‘Sybil, I always felt, was on my side when Rufus was being difficult. Minot would be the place for her. Shall I write and say yes?’

‘Tell her it will mean a lot to us, to have her around,’ Mattie said. She felt a familiar pang: if only Evie would come here too, wouldn’t that be wonderful?

There were no deliveries to make on Christmas Day, though the cows still had to be milked. No Bert to help out this year, as he had to work over the Christmas period, but would have two days off later to spend with his family. Gretchen and Kjetl had offered to help in the morning and evening. ‘We have our main celebration on Christmas Eve,’ Gretchen said.

She didn’t ask about Bert, and Mattie felt a little sad that her romantic notions regarding Gretchen and Bert had not come to anything. Maybe it was because Bert was not one for writing letters. But she also guessed that the Norwegians liked the thought of marrying one of their own. It strengthened the ties between them, working together for the common good. They were generous too with support for their neighbours.

The living-room floor was awash with Christmas and birthday
wrappings
as Megan tore her parcels open, sitting in her warm dressing-gown on the rug before the fire, on Christmas morning.

She was pleased with all her presents, even the white box containing a pair of new school shoes with stout soles and high, laced fronts. The shoes were put to one side, the box would shortly become a doll’s house at her mother’s suggestion. Transparent, coloured wrapping from toffees eaten before breakfast, and silver paper which had contained chocolate coins would make stained-glass windows and tiny cutlery. There was a little cardboard cut-out clown with paper-fastener joints and strings to manipulate to make him dance; Megan would colour the clown with her crayons later. She had a pile of books which would keep her happily absorbed all winter.

‘You are a very lucky girl,’ Mattie observed.

‘I know,’ Megan said happily.

The workers were almost blown through the door by the wind, in a flurry of snow. They had cold, red hands which they held out gratefully to the glowing fire.

‘My teeth are still chattering,’ Gretchen said ruefully.

Mattie had laid on a second breakfast for them, and when they warmed up they moved to the table where Griff carved thick slices of crumbed pink gammon, not the usual curls of ham that his wife and daughter preferred. Megan insisted that the boiled eggs should sit in the
precious egg-cups decorated with brightly coloured cockerels which were the set her parents had brought from England.

‘The cockerels didn’t lay the eggs!’ she told them solemnly.

‘I somehow didn’t think they did,’ Kjetl said, equally straight-faced.

Mattie was not feeling too well; she had a thumping headache and a sore throat. She had dosed herself with hot lemon and honey and
swallowed
two aspirin first thing. She didn’t want to say anything and spoil their enjoyment of Christmas Day. They had attended church on Christmas Eve, and it was then that she had experienced the shivery aches and pains which usually meant she was developing a cold.

Griff glanced at her with concern, but knew she would be cross if he commented.

‘Well,’ Gretchen said, looking at Kjetl, ‘time for us to go home, I think.’

‘Snowing quite hard now,’ Griff observed, peering out of the window. ‘Still, the worst hit is North Forks, I hear on the wireless.’

‘Snow – oh good!’ Megan wasn’t interested in a place she’d not heard of before. ‘Don’t forget your promise, Dad – to pull me on the new sledge to Old Hick, will you?’

‘Not today. You and Mommy must keep warm indoors. Thank you for your kind help this morning, Gretchen and Kjetl. Wish your families a good Christmas.’

‘You sure you can manage this afternoon by yourself?’ Kjetl asked diffidently.

‘Yes, don’t worry, but I will be glad to see you tomorrow.’

‘We can do the deliveries for you,’ Kjetl offered.

‘Oh, are you old enough to drive?’ Griff asked.

‘We have both been driving round the farm since we were ten years old,’ Gretchen put in. ‘But Kjetl is seventeen and he can officially drive now.’

‘We’ll see, it depends on the weather – we may have to pull the sled after all!’

‘We can do that!’ they chorused.

When they had gone, Griff said to Mattie: ‘Those Norwegian kids – they really thrive on hard work, don’t they?’

‘Did you know that Kjetl’s little brother catches gophers for bounty money?’

Before her dad could answer, Megan butted in, ‘Oh Dad, please can
we
catch gophers when we go to Old Hick, and buy lots of sweets with the money?’

‘The gophers have sharp teeth, they gnaw at trees and burrow down in the soil to eat the roots of crops, but
you
won’t have good teeth, if you eat any more toffee!’

By late afternoon Mattie was aware of a pain behind her ribs. She was sweating too, not just from the heat of the fire. Griff returned from the afternoon milking looking forward to turkey sandwiches and Christmas cake, having worked off the effects of a splendid dinner that only he could have done justice to. He found Mattie lying on the sofa with a cold flannel pressed to her brow, and Megan playing quietly with her dancing clown. No repast.

He tried a feeble joke. ‘Rather a repeat of five years ago, eh?’

Mattie struggled to sit up. ‘How can you say that!’ She wept. ‘At least I knew what was going on, then – and there was something good about to happen – Megan!’

‘Yes, me,’ Megan said uncertainly. It wasn’t like her mother to be ill.

‘You’re very hot,’ Griff told Mattie. ‘You do have a high temperature this time. You need to rest in bed. I’ll fill the stone hot-water bottle first.’

‘Can we play snap?’ Megan wheedled, showing her father her new cards.

‘Let me just make Mommy comfortable, first. Then we’ll have cake and mince pies and then we’ll play cards – is that a bargain?’

‘I think so.’ Megan wasn’t really sure what a bargain was.

‘You must be tired,’ poor Mattie said, as Griff slipped her nightdress over her head. She allowed him to help her into bed, to pile pillows behind her. She stretched her feet, clad in thick bedsocks, on to the warmth of the stone bed-warmer.

‘I’m all right,’ Griff insisted. He’d filled the water jug on the bedside table. ‘I’d better keep my promise to Megan. I’ll look in on you again soon….’

‘You’re so kind – I love you,’ she said faintly.

‘And I love you,’ he told her. She mustn’t know that he was worried sick about her. If things became worse, how could he go for the doctor, leave her and Megan?

By 8 p.m. when Megan was in bed, Mattie was worse. Every breath she took made her gasp with the searing pain in her chest. She clung desperately to Griff.

They didn’t hear the first knock on the door until it was loudly repeated. Griff disengaged himself gently and hurried to see who was calling.

Gretchen and her father stood there, muffled in heavy coats and scarves, stamping their feet to warm them. ‘Gretchen tell me your wife look not well. She ask me to bring her back to help you out,’ Mr Larsen said in his slow, accented English.

‘Thank God you’re here!’ Griff pulled them inside.

The visitors took one look at Mattie and acted swiftly.

‘I got my truck outside and snow chains if I need them. I go for the doctor,’ Mr Larsen decided. ‘Gretchen get steaming kettle in room to help her breathe.’

When they arrived Doc, warmed by a generous nip of spirits from a flask, climbed aboard the truck and they began the cautious drive back to the farm.

It was a night Griff would never forget: a nightmare, he would say, except that he was awake and terrified. Gretchen’s father had gone home to alert his wife to the emergency, but said he would return at first light. At Griff’s insistence, Gretchen shared Megan’s bed, but she slept fitfully, having said, ‘Call me, if you need me, Mr Parry.’ Doc and Griff remained at Mattie’s bedside all night.

‘I believe she has pleurisy, inflammation of the lining of the lungs,’ Doc said. ‘It may turn into pneumonia. There will be a crisis point. We can only watch and wait.’

The ambulance made it through the snow to the farm soon after daybreak. When Mr Larsen arrived he was despatched to Doc’s house to telephone the hospital.

Mattie was rolled into warm blankets and carried gently outside to the waiting vehicle. She was lifted into the back and fastened by restraints to a stretcher bed.

‘You must go with your wife,’ Mr Larsen told Griff. ‘We, your friends, will take care of your business. Gretchen shall stay to care for the little one, and the house.’

Griff kissed his small daughter. He tried to keep calm, for her sake. ‘We are taking Mommy to the hospital, who will make her better. Be a good girl for Gretchen.’

Gretchen cuddled her in her strong arms. ‘What would you like for breakfast?’

‘Pancakes,’ Megan said hopefully. ‘With lemon and syrup. Like Mommy makes.’

It was six weeks before they were able to welcome a frail Mattie home. No one told her how very ill she had been, but fortunately she had only vague memories of fever-ridden nights, the gasping for every breath, and the pain which had taken over her body. She had no concept of time. Sometimes she had been aware that Griff was sitting at her bedside, holding her hand, and once, she knew he was crying, but she couldn’t say anything to console him.

Megan had started school while Mattie was in hospital. She walked there with Gretchen, as she now did to church on Sunday afternoons. She drew pictures for her mother, and the teacher and the other children
made a special fuss of her, so although of course she missed Mattie she was made to feel secure and as happy as possible, in the circumstances. And she got plenty of hugs from her dad, as always.

When she and Gretchen returned from the school one day Megan had no idea that a wonderful surprise awaited her.

‘Mommy!’ she cried, rushing over to Mattie on the settee, still in her night clothes, and covered by a quilt. Her mother was so pale and thin, and Megan could hardly make out what she was saying, but she was smiling and holding out her arms to her.