Where Bluebells Chime

‘For a town lass you seem to know quite a bit about hens, Gracie Fielding.’

‘Not all that much, Mr Catchpole, but I like them and if Mrs Sutton wants some hens of her own, I’d like to look after them for her. You have to give up your egg ration, though. You take your ration book to the Food Office and they cancel your egg coupons and give you chits to buy hen meal instead. It’s by far the better way. You get a lot more eggs and they’re lovely and fresh. You save all the scraps and potato peelings and such like, then boil them up and mix them with the meal. Hens lay well on it.’

‘Then I reckon you and Mrs Sutton should have a word about it, lass. You’m welcome to her hens.’

‘Would you mind, Gracie?’

‘Not a bit, Sir Andrew.’

‘Good. Well, that’s tomorrow night settled, and the hens,’ he smiled. ‘And, Gracie, please call me Drew. Most people do.’

Catchpole drained his mug, observing the couple and saying not a word. Seemed it wasn’t only the lads from Holdenby Moor who’d be taking a fancy to his land girl. Young Drew seemed smitten an’ all. And he must remember, if Miss Julia ever did get her dratted hens, to ask Gracie to keep the droppings for him when she cleaned out their coop. Hen muck made good manure; brought tomatoes along a treat.

He sucked on his pipe. Happen a few Rhode Island Reds mightn’t be such a bad idea after all. As long as they were well away from his garden, that was!

‘Do let her go, Aunt Anna,’ Drew urged. ‘There’ll be a transport laid on to get us there and I’ll take good care of her. Tatiana does so want to come.’

‘I’m sure you would take care of her, but a dance at the aerodrome …?’

‘Dada says I can go if Drew’s there,’ Daisy offered. ‘It’s all very proper. There won’t be any rowdiness. The aircrew boys are very nice.’

‘But it would be all blacked out and goodness knows what might happen,’ Anna murmured, feeling guilty for even thinking what could take place should her daughter be enticed from the dance floor to heaven only knew where.

‘But everywhere is blacked out, Mother! And I know what you are thinking,’ Tatiana flung. ‘You think I’ll get up to mischief, don’t you, necking round the back of the hangars with some bloke who’s after what he can get?’

‘Tatiana – do not speak like that! I thought no such thing!’ Anna’s cheeks flushed pink. ‘It’s just that feelings run high when there’s a war on and –’

‘Don’t worry. Tatty wouldn’t be able to leave the dance. There’ll be a guard on the door, most likely,’ Drew hastened. ‘The Air Force couldn’t allow people the freedom of the aerodrome, if only for security reasons. Tatty will be fine with Daisy and me.’ And girls of eighteen weren’t so naïve as Aunt Anna tried to make out, he thought, though he was careful not to say so. ‘I’d see her back home.’

‘Mother, please? You know how I love dancing!’

Anna gazed down at her feet, knowing just how high feelings could run. Desperately in love with Elliot Sutton she had been at eighteen; besotted by him, desperate for his glance, his touch, his mouth on hers. But Elliot had been dead these many years and she had not shed a tear at his graveside. Nor since.

‘Very well. You may go, since Drew will be with you. But you must not stay out late, remember.’

‘We can’t, Mrs Sutton,’ Daisy was quick to point out. ‘Gracie has to be back in the hostel by eleven.’

‘And I won’t be creeping out of the dance, don’t worry. I wouldn’t even have thought of such a thing if you hadn’t put the idea into my head!’ Tatiana flung, angry to be so humiliated before Daisy and Drew.

‘Now listen to me, young lady!’ Anna was becoming angry. ‘If you continue to be impudent you’ll not only not go to the dance, but you’ll be gated for the remainder of Drew’s leave. I mean it!’

‘Mother, you couldn’t! You wouldn’t!’ Tatiana wailed, her eyes filling with tears.

‘I could, but I won’t. I said you might go and you shall. That you don’t do anything foolish is surely not too much to ask?’

‘It isn’t!’ Tatiana flung her arms around her mother. ‘And I will be good!’ She was smiling now, tears forgotten, because she could twist her mother round her little finger – had always been able to. She gave a skip of delight, then grasped Daisy’s hand, pulling her towards the stairs.

‘Let’s go through my wardrobe,’ she demanded when her bedroom door was firmly closed. ‘I just love those aircrew boys and I’ll die if no one asks me to dance!’

‘They will. You’re very pretty, Tatty. Just like Anne Rutherford. And I think,’ Daisy took an emerald-green dress from the rail, ‘that you should wear this one. Green really suits you. And I’d wear the gold dancing pumps with it.’

The green it would be and oh! Tatiana sighed inside her, she couldn’t wait for tomorrow night. Just her luck, she thought, suddenly sober, if most of the aircrews were flying. She crossed her fingers and wished for the thickest, heaviest pea-souper there was, because only fog could ground the bombers.

And wasn’t she the stupid one? Pea-soupers, in July?

The RAF transport, driven by a Waaf corporal, came to a stop at the entrance to the sergeants’ mess.

‘Okay, you lot! Out you get!’ She let down the tail-flap with a clatter. ‘And mind how you go.’

Drew jumped down first, glad to be out of the gloomy interior of the canvas-covered truck. He was the only man there and had been met with wolf-whistles from the land girls when he’d arrived with Tatiana and Daisy at the crossroads.

‘Shut up, you lot!’ Gracie had stepped out of the huddle of waiting women. ‘This is Drew Sutton and he’s on leave, so give over being so stupid. Anyone’d think you’d never seen a sailor before!’

‘Not as tall and fair and handsome as this one!’ someone quipped. ‘Where’ve you been hiding him, Gracie?’

‘Stop it, I told you, or you’ll get me the sack! Drew’s my boss – well, sort of …’

Drew’s embarrassment and Gracie’s protests had been cut short by the arrival of the transport from RAF Holdenby Moor, and they climbed aboard, laughing.

Over Brattocks Wood, a full moon was rising. It was round and white but tonight on the way home it would shine silver, help light their way, pick out shapes and ditches – even potholes in the narrow road.

‘Everybody okay?’ the driver asked. ‘Get yourselves settled. Just one more pick-up to make. Soon be there.’

She let out the clutch, and the truck lurched forward and on to Holdenby village, where more girls waited. Later, when darkness came, she would be thankful for the moonlight. It was the very devil, driving in the blackout with headlamps painted over black except for the smallest slit in the centre. Thank heaven for white-painted kerbstones, she sighed. The times she had run off the road were too many to count.

The guardroom lay ahead and she stopped with a squealing of brakes that brought shouts and giggles from the back of the truck.

‘Ladies for the sergeants’ mess, plus one matelot,’ she called as the red and white pole that barred the road was raised.

Tatiana shivered with delight as she jumped down into Drew’s waiting arms because even though the door and all the windows of the Nissen hut that served as a mess were closed, she could hear the faint sound of music and the vibrating thunk and tap of bass and drums. She loved to dance and closed her eyes and fervently begged for her fair share of partners. It would be too awful, too degrading, if she sat out every dance when she had taken such trouble to look her best.

She need not have worried. Lady partners were thin on the ground and a cheer went up as they pushed aside the curtain that hung over the door.

Already the air was stuffy and thick with cigarette smoke. It wasn’t time for the blackouts to be put into place, but the windows had been nailed up during the winter and no one had bothered trying to open them since.

They laid their coats over a table at the end of the hut and Tatiana shook her head and ran her fingers through her long dark hair. Then she turned to look into eyes almost as blue as Daisy’s and smiled a breathless, ‘Yes, please,’ when a tall, fair sergeant asked if she would like to dance with him. He held her gently and not too closely and she matched her steps to his as they moved into a waltz.

‘You haven’t been here before.’ It was more a statement than a question. ‘I’d have seen you, if you had.’

‘No. This is my first time. I was only allowed to come because my cousin is home. That’s him,’ she nodded. ‘The sailor, dancing with the land girl. Maybe I won’t be able to come again,’ she sighed, wide-eyed.

‘Then we’ll have to make the most of tonight, won’t we?’ he smiled. ‘I want every dance – okay? Name’s Timothy Thomson – the Scottish Thomson, without the P. Tim.’

‘I’m Tatiana Sutton,’ she breathed, wondering why her voice wobbled and her lips were so stiff. ‘Tatty – and I’m very pleased to meet you.’ The words came out all in a rush.

‘Tatty’s a silly name. Where I come from, a tattie-bogle is a scarecrow and you’re no’ that. I’m very pleased to meet you, too.’ His eyes challenged hers, daring her to look away, claiming her, almost. ‘Tell me where you live. I want to know all about you.’

So she told him, and that her father was dead, but that very soon her grandfather would be coming to live with them when the military moved into the house they were going to take away from him.

‘Is that the old castle? I’ve often seen it when we fly over.’

‘It isn’t old and it isn’t a castle. It only thinks it is. It’s awful, really – sort of pushy. I think Grandfather’s glad to be leaving it for the duration.’

‘You must be rich.’

‘We aren’t, actually. We might have been if Father hadn’t been killed. He’d have inherited, you see. But I suppose, in the end, Bas will be stuck with it and he hates it.’

‘Bas?’ he frowned.

‘Sebastian Sutton. He’s my cousin – lives in Kentucky.’

‘And why, Tatiana Sutton, do you have a Russian name?’ The dance ended and he took her arm and guided her to chairs in the far corner of the floor.

‘My mother is Russian. Her family left because of the Communists. She’s called Aleksandrina Anastasia – Anastasia for the grand duchess. They were born on the same day, just a few hours apart.’ And because all at once she felt so easy with him, she told him about her Grandmother Petrovska, who was very sniffy and always wore black, and how she was very poor because most of what they owned had been left behind in St Petersburg, which Grandmother refused to call Leningrad.

‘You don’t know what poor is,’ he said bluntly. ‘Take me, for instance. I come from a Greenock tenement. I’m bright, though. Got a free place at the local academy. Should’ve been at university if the war hadn’t happened.’

‘But you’ll get there in the end,’ she comforted, ‘when the war is over.’

‘When this war’s over I’ll be long dead,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘The survival rate for aircrews is pretty grim, and it’s grimmer for tail-gunners like me.’

‘Then why did you volunteer? Did you have to?’ she demanded angrily, because she had only just found him and she didn’t want, ever, to lose him.

‘Not really. But on the first Clydeside raid I lost family and friends and I went out in a rage and signed up.’

‘How old are you, Tim?’

‘Twenty. And you …?’

‘Eighteen. Nineteen next March. But can we dance again, please?’

All at once it wasn’t enough to be sitting beside him, her hand in his. She needed to be closer, his arms around her. She needed it especially because he was right; not only did aircraft go missing, but even when they got back the rear-gunner was sometimes dead. Tail-end Charlies they were called. Luftwaffe fighter pilots always shot up the gunner first.

He took her in his arms and she moved closer. ‘I think I’m falling in love with you,’ she whispered in her best Imperial Russian.

‘What did you say?’ he laughed.

‘I was speaking in Russian.’ She lifted her eyes to his. ‘I said I think – I think you are a very good dancer.’ Her cheeks flushed hotly because she had almost said it; had wanted to say it.

‘Thanks. You’re no’ bad yourself.’

He drew her closer still and rested his cheek on her head and she relaxed against him and let go her indrawn breath in a sigh of contentment.

She wanted tonight never to end. She wanted to stay in his arms until the war was over.

‘Will you ring me tomorrow?’ she murmured, suddenly bold.

‘If we aren’t flying. No one can phone out if we’re going on ops. Security, you see. But if there’s no call, wish me luck when I fly over?’

‘I will, Tim.’ With all her heart and soul she would wish him luck; will him safely back. He had to get back. He couldn’t get killed; not when they had only just met. Not when she loved him so much.

‘Sssh. We’ll wake them up,’ Daisy breathed as their feet crunched the gravel drive that led to Denniston House.

‘Can you see all right, Tatty?’ Drew whispered as she fumbled her key into the lock.

‘Fine, thanks.’ Carefully she swung the door open, then turned to fold her arms round Drew, kissing him fondly.

‘G’night, coz. ’Night, Daisy. It’s been just great. Thanks for getting me in, Gracie.’

‘No bother. I’ll let you know next time they send us an invitation.’

At an upstairs window, Anna Sutton pulled back the curtain, peering into the moonlit night. She needn’t have worried. Her daughter was safely home. She watched as Drew and Daisy and Rowangarth’s land girl waved a silent good night, then slipped back into bed, listening to the sound of the closing of the front door, the slipping home of the bolts, the creaking of the second stair from the top as Tatiana crept to her room. The knob of the bedroom door turned slowly, carefully.

‘I’m home,’ Tatiana whispered.

The light from the landing fell on Anna’s closed eyelids. Her mother was asleep. Gently she closed the door.

Anna’s eyes flew open and a smile tilted the corners of her mouth. Dear, innocent Tatiana. She hoped she’d had a lovely time.

They said good night to Gracie at the bothy gate, then Daisy slipped her arm through Drew’s.

‘Are you coming in for a drink? Mam said she’d leave a tray for us.’ She pushed open the door, still unlocked, then switched on the kitchen light, her eyes automatically turning to check the blackout curtains. ‘Sit down, Drew. Won’t be a minute. My, but you had a good time – danced with Gracie most of the night, didn’t you?’

‘Mm. I like her. She’s fun. She’s a good dancer, too. Taught me some new steps. She says there’s a dance in Creesby on Wednesday night – shall we all go?’

‘Drew Sutton, I believe you’re sweet on her! You haven’t fallen for her, have you?’

‘Of course not!’ Drew’s cheeks coloured.

‘You kissed her good night …’

‘I kissed Tatty good night and I suppose I shall kiss you good night too, Daiz, but I haven’t fallen for any of you!’

‘Then you disappoint me. Here you are, almost twenty-three and still heart-whole. Are you going the way of all sailors with a girl in every port?’

‘Sorry, Daiz, no. I’d like to have just one special girl – fall in love with her. I like Gracie. She’s pretty and she’s great to be with. And could you lend her a dress, do you think, for the Creesby dance; just until her mother sends her one from home, and her dancing shoes? She says it’s awful going to a dance in breeches and a shirt and tie.’

‘Course I will, but are you sure you aren’t just a little bit in love?’

‘I like Gracie a lot – I’ve just said so – but she isn’t the one. I’ll know the minute I kiss her when the right girl comes along. And when she does, you’ll be the first to know, Daiz, I promise you!’

Julia lay still in bed, not wanting to move lest she awakened Nathan. Her mind buzzed with silly thoughts and tired as she was, sleep would not come.

She supposed she should try counting her blessings as her mother did. ‘Better than counting sheep, dear.’ And blessings Julia Sutton had aplenty. Drew was home and her husband had no fear of call-up. Nathan was fifty-two, next; her brother Giles’s age, had Giles lived. Giles would’ve been pleased she and Nathan were married.

Why had she waited so long? Why hadn’t she known Nathan loved her, had always loved her, even when he assisted at her wedding to Andrew?

Almost two years, now, since she and Nathan had been married quietly in York, yet even on their first night together she felt she must surely be cheating him; that never again could she love as she had loved Andrew.

That first, long-ago loving had been deep and passionate because for an army doctor and a young VAD nurse there were no tomorrows; just here and now and living wildly their moments together. Yet in all the three years she and Andrew had been married, only ten nights were spent in his arms.

Yet being married to Nathan was equally good, but in a different way. This time it was gentler and sweeter and safer, somehow, because for her and Nathan there was a tomorrow.

She swung her feet to the floor then padded to the window to pull aside the curtain. Delight washed over her at the sight of trees silvered by a bright, full moon, gilding the stable block and the outline of the bothy behind the wild garden; making a mockery of the blackout.

She stood, breath indrawn. Not a sound outside. No bombers airborne tonight. Unsafe for aircraft to range the skies silhouetted darkly against the brightness, easy targets for hunting night-fighters.

Tonight the crews at Holdenby Moor were grounded and doubtless dancing without a care because tonight at least they could be sure of one tomorrow. Drew had put on his uniform and gone to that dance with Daisy and Tatty and the new land girl. Now it was almost midnight and he wasn’t home yet.

‘Julia …’

‘Sorry, darling. Did I wake you?’

‘I wasn’t asleep. Come back to bed. Drew’s a grown man now. Bet he stays out later than this at Plymouth.’

‘Yes, but he’s at the aerodrome and outside it’s like daylight.’ She pulled back the covers and lay down beside Nathan. ‘On nights like this, German fighters come nuisance raiding, remember; flying in low out of the moon and shooting up our aerodromes and –’

‘Julia, for goodness’ sake! Drew is all right and Daisy and Tatty, too.’

‘Y-yes. I suppose so. But how did you know I was thinking about Drew being out?’

‘Of course you were. I know you so well that knowing what you are thinking comes easily.’

‘It does?’ She turned to face him, kissing him gently, her breath soft on his cheek. ‘Then tell me, what am I thinking now?’

‘You are thinking,’ he said huskily, drawing her closer, ‘that you want me to make love to you.’

‘Mm.’ She kissed him again. ‘My darling – how well you know me …’

7

Yesterday, Mary Strong returned from Creesby in triumph, having found the blue silk cabbage roses with which to trim the wide-brimmed biscuit-coloured hat she was to wear to her wedding.

‘I tell you, Tilda – no silk flowers to be found. I’d just about given up hope when I went down a side street and found them in a poky little shop. Dust all over everything, mind, but there they were, just what I’d been looking for and exactly the same blue as the frock!’

‘Lucky,’ Tilda murmured, glad that in four days Mary would be Mrs Stubbs, and wedding talk a thing of the past.

‘I’ll take them over to Alice to sew on the hat.’ Mary eased on the biscuit-coloured wedding shoes she was breaking in for Saturday, because not for anything was she walking down the aisle at All Souls’ squeaking with every step. ‘Won’t be more’n a couple of minutes. Table’s laid for dinner – you know they want it a bit earlier, tonight?’

On account of Drew going to the dance in Creesby, that was. Daisy was going, too, and the land girl, Mary learned only that morning when she had gone to the kitchen garden with Tilda’s vegetable list. Indeed, it had been the land girl’s idea for Mr Catchpole to make a finger-spray of flowers instead of a posy for her to carry.

‘Pale pink carnations and white gypsophila, that’s what, with a little loop underneath so you can slip it over your middle finger. And a pink carnation, perhaps, for your bridegroom’s buttonhole …?’

Mary had taken at once to the idea though truth known she had never heard of finger-sprays before.

… and the bride, dressed in conflower blue and given away by Mr Thomas Dwerryhouse, carried a finger-spray of pink carnations. It would read very well in the Creesby Advertiser. A nice girl, that Gracie, even if she did go dancing with Sir Andrew and presumed to call him Drew after only six days’ acquaintance.

She sighed, though with pleasure or relief she couldn’t be sure. Relief, she supposed, to be getting wed at last.

Tatiana Sutton looked critically at her reflection in the full-length mirror and was pleased with what she saw. And she would look better still once she was able to put on her lipstick and dab a little of her precious perfume on her wrists. But the finishing touches must wait until later or her mother would become suspicious if she went to Daisy’s house all dressed up. If Mama really knew where she was going she would put on her Grandmother Petrovska face and forbid the Creesby dance, even though Drew and Daisy would be there. Creesby dances were not allowed because, unlike the Holdenby hops, they were frequented by people – men – of unknown pedigree, who could be relied upon to take liberties with young ladies in general and Tatiana Sutton in particular.

The night following the aerodrome dance, Tim Thomson did not phone, and six Whitley bombers and six Wellingtons had thrashed and roared into the sky.

‘Please Lord, please take care of Tim; take care of all of them,’ she whispered, dry-mouthed. Then she turned to the icon above her bed and, crossing herself piously in the Russian Orthodox manner, prayed again to the Virgin and Child, just to make sure. She was relieved, on counting them home next morning, that twelve planes came in to land at Holdenby Moor.

Not long after, the phone rang and she found herself shaking when a voice whispered, ‘Hullo there, hen. Just thought I’d let you know I’m back. Can we meet?’

That was when the drawing-room door opened and she was forced to reply, ‘Daisy! Hi! I think so. When?’

‘The crossroads outside Holdenby,’ Tim had replied, laughter in his voice. ‘Tonight at seven – okay?’

‘Could you make it half-past, Daisy?’

And Tim had said that half-past seven was just fine and that he looked forward to seeing her.

Tatania spent the rest of that day partly on a pale pink cloud and partly in a trough of gloom, worried lest when they met at the crossroads someone should see them, though as it turned out no one did. They had walked the narrow road that led to Holdenby Pike with never a car passing them – thanks be for petrol rationing – and Tim kissed her, which made her cheeks flame and her heart bump deliciously.

That first kiss was kind and gentle, because she hadn’t quite known how to do it and blushingly told him so, though he assured her gravely that she would get much better with practice.

‘Tomorrow night is a bit – well, uncertain,’ he whispered throatily, kissing the tip of her nose, which Tatiana found thrilling, ‘and I mightn’t be able to phone, but Wednesday should be okay. Shall we say Wednesday – the Creesby dance? Will I call for you?’

‘No, Tim! Oh, no!’

‘But of course, you’ll be going with Daisy,’ he grinned. ‘See you at the dance, then?’

‘Yes, please,’ she breathed, closing her eyes, lifting her face to his. And she parted her lips a little, just to let him know she wanted him to kiss her again.

And their second kiss had been wonderful.

Tatiana was grateful that on the morning of the Creesby dance, Grandfather Sutton made a final check of the locks of the rooms in which he had been allowed to store his furniture, then handed over two complete sets of keys to the army major waiting to take possession of Pendenys Place. That a third set of keys was still in Edward Sutton’s pocket was of little consequence, he having neither the need nor the desire ever to use them. But having them meant he had not quite given up Pendenys, though why the thought should please him he had no idea.