Kitty’s War

‘Been playing in the dirt again?’ I asked, trying to hide the surge of joy that cramped my insides.

‘Aye. Lost our football and we had to go over and ask Jerry could we please have it back.’

I lost the battle, and laughed out loud, hearing my voice shaking in the evening air. ‘I take it you’ve seen Jack?’

‘I have. He told me about Oliver,’ Archie said, and took a step towards me. He was looking at me oddly, and I couldn’t work out what he was thinking. Then he reached out and gently lifted my hat off my head and dropped it to the ground, along with his own. Seizing my face in his two hands, he looked at me with a fierce, intense expression and then, finally, our lips touched, igniting a flare that shot through me from crown to toe. I heard my own gasp, and then his groan, and the touch grew firmer, his lips parting, and his tongue flickering along my teeth.

For what seemed like hours we remained locked together, my heart thundering, my hands finding their way into the thick hair at the back of his head and curling into the warmth there, and it took a while for me to realise I was pressing against him with my whole body. My gloved fingers caressed the back of his neck, and I could feel his thumbs brushing first my cheeks, and then my temples, before the kiss broke and he drew my head against his chest, holding me there as if there was a chance I might try to draw away.

‘Oh, bloody hell, Kitty,’ he murmured. ‘What have I done?’

‘You’ve come back safe,’ I tried to say, but the tears were choking the words off in my throat, because the kiss had awakened everything I had been trying so hard to suppress. And it was too late.

I did draw back then, and wiped my eyes with my still-wrinkled gloves, belatedly feeling my face flame at the way I’d behaved. ‘I’m glad you’ve come back,’ I stammered. ‘But I’m sorry for…’ I waved a vague hand, unable to find the words to excuse my overeager response. My family would be mortified.

He straightened away from me. ‘I’m sorry too,’ he said. ‘Strange, how we react to danger. I’ve been over, and made it back before, but this time it felt…I don’t know, like I had more to lose.’

I wanted to ask what, but no matter what he answered it would be wrong; to hear what I’d hoped to hear would hurt more than anything else.

‘Well,’ I said instead, ‘it’s understandable that we should have felt…’ Again I couldn’t find the words, but I went on. ‘I mean, it’s been a terrifying time. For all of us.’

‘Aye.’ His voice lost that confused, longing tone, and became brisk. ‘Uncle Jack has asked me if I’d bring you back to England. But I can’t get away.’

‘No, of course.’ I cleared my throat. ‘That’s… I wouldn’t expect it.’

‘I didn’t want you to think we’re abandoning you.’

‘Don’t worry. Really.’

‘I’ll arrange for a driver to take you to the ferry. I’ll try and get some leave once Will’s able to return.’

‘That’ll be nice.’

‘Aye.’

‘So, then,’ I said, at the same time as he said, ‘Right.’ We looked at each other and smiled, a little hesitantly, but the smiles were real.

‘I’ll write,’ he said, holding out his hand, then bent to pick up my hat and handed it to me. ‘Sorry about this.’

I pushed away the thundering memory of how it had felt when he’d taken it off me, and took it, then looked back down at the ground, where his own cap still lay. ‘Don’t you want that?’

He picked it up, and gave it a pointless dusting-off, smearing the mud across the flat crown. He shrugged and grinned. ‘Ah well, could be worse.’

‘Archie?’ He raised an eyebrow, and my voice was soft. ‘Come back safe next time, too.’

‘Nae bother,’ he said, exaggerating his own accent, and this time the kiss was as chaste and brotherly as they had been all my life. ‘Don’t work too hard; you’re not up to it yet.’

And he turned away, leaving me standing in the street with the memory of our first and last kiss tingling on my lips.

Chapter Five

Dark River Farm, May 1917

He did manage four days’ leave, when Will came home, two of which were spent at the farm, and they had been two days filled with relief and happiness, and the warmth of our old friendship. But there was something new between us now as well, something beautiful and helpless, and doomed. Tomorrow morning would see him leaving again for Belgium and his other life, and while the largest part of me battled with the terror of it, and the longing for him to stay, some smaller, hidden part accepted the relief of knowing his attention was no longer on me. On what I could not give him.

Evie, Will and Lizzy were in the kitchen on this last evening, and I knew they’d start talking about us as soon as one of them glanced out of the window and saw Archie had come into the yard to find me. As always, I watched his approach with the same mixture of longing and apprehension, fixing a smile on my face and hoping I’d find the strength, once again, to resist touching him.

‘Young Kittlington,’ he said, and his voice was almost enough to break down that resistance; he sounded tired, exhausted even, and I knew this short leave had not provided the rest he needed. He’d spent most of his time helping Mrs Adams do various jobs, and the rest in talking to me—I was much the harder work of the two; I knew that. I also knew I was the reason he’d come here at all, instead of going home to Scotland.

‘Captain Buchanan,’ I returned, leaning slightly away to discourage contact, but broadening my smile to compensate. ‘Are you all set?’

‘Aye. Not much to pack,’ he pointed out, and turned to lean on the fence. He seemed absorbed by the high-stepping chickens as they pecked at the food I’d just thrown them, and didn’t speak for a moment, so I joined him at the fence; it was easier to stand beside him and not have to look at his face.

After a while he cleared his throat. ‘Look, Kitty, I know you understand how my feelings for you have changed, grown into something else.’

‘Archie—’

‘No, wait. Please. All these years you’ve been Oli’s sister. Sweet, but just a child. Even when Evie told me what had happened to you, who we thought did it, and I wanted to rip Drewe’s driver limb from limb, I was feeling it as the shock of someone hurting my family. The anger blinded me to everything else. At first.’

‘And what of your devotion to Evie?’ I couldn’t help saying. ‘Did she feel like family too?’

A flush touched his neck. ‘I thought I loved her. Perhaps I did, and perhaps I still do, but not in that way.’ His voice dropped, became urgent. ‘Kitty, that time I came to find you at the hotel, and I saw you concentrating so hard on your gloves, you looked so intense, but so sad. It hit me harder than I’ve ever thought possible, but I couldn’t accept it. It felt wrong, and I thought I’d frighten you if I told you how I felt—I know you’ve always looked on me as a brother. I’d have hated more than anything to lose your trust.’ He sighed and rubbed his face with both hands, pressing his fingers to his closed eyes. ‘That’s why I lied, and arranged for someone else to bring you back when Uncle Jack asked me. It’s why I let you come back alone, when all I wanted to do was take hold of you and never let you out of my sight again.’ He dropped his hands away from his face and fixed his eyes on mine again. ‘I have never felt so…fiercely, about anyone, the way I feel about you. Now I’ve accepted it, and let it in, it actually hurts.’

‘It does, doesn’t it?’ I whispered, without meaning to. I couldn’t look away, but my eyes burned.

Archie searched my face, and finally asked, in almost a whisper, ‘Do you think you could ever feel the same way about me?’

I couldn’t speak. Didn’t he realise? Didn’t it blaze from my eyes, the way I felt it in every part of me? He caught my hands in his, and I was too startled to pull away.

‘Will you wait for me, when all this is over?’ He let out a ragged breath. ‘Kitty Maitland, will you marry me?’

I could have wept for all the years I’d longed to hear him say it, and more than anything I wanted selfishly to entrust myself to those familiar arms which, I knew without a doubt now, would keep me safe for ever. But I never could, and I couldn’t even tell him why; he would only persuade me I was wrong, and that would ruin him because I would believe him. His trembling uncertainty of my love for him formed the words I heard falling into the tense silence.

‘I’m sorry, but no.’

The pain on his face was echoed in my heart, and I hated myself for putting it there. Almost more, I hated the fact that it was not a surprised pain; his face just paled, and his eyes closed briefly, and the resigned look that drew his brows together told of someone hearing what they’d already braced themselves to hear.

‘I understand,’ he said in a low voice, but he didn’t let go of my hands. I wanted to tell him he didn’t understand, not at all, not if he believed it was because my feelings were not every bit as fierce, and every bit as hopeless.

‘We’ll still be friends though, aye?’ he said, and his mouth flickered into a smile, although his eyes remained shadowed.

‘I hope so,’ I said in a small voice. He touched my cheek, and while I fought every instinct I possessed not to lean into his hand, I told myself this was the right thing to do. He deserved someone unspoilt and respectable, someone he could be proud of, someone bright and lively who could make him laugh… God knows he needed that, after all he’d seen. Yes, I was doing the right thing.

I wondered when I’d start to believe it.

Dark River Farm, June 1917

‘What’s that?’ Belinda stubbed out her freshly lit cigarette on the floor of the barn, and I turned to the door, my mind racing; if Mrs Adams caught us drinking and smoking we’d be given vile jobs to do tomorrow, but even worse, for me at least, would be her disapproval.

‘Is someone out there?’ I hissed.

A light cough confirmed it, and Bel went to the open door and peered across the yard towards the house. ‘No-one’s come out,’ she called back in a low voice, while I patted around for the cork to stop up the wine bottle again. My fuzzy-headedness had faded quickly with the sudden shock of possible discovery, and I stood and picked up the long-handled broom with which I’d been beating rats out of the pile of sacks. Although who would believe we’d been working, when we could barely see to—

‘Oh!’ Bel turned, and in the near-complete darkness I saw the gleam of her teeth as she grinned. ‘It’s him!’

‘Who?’

‘The chap who gave me the wine! He’s coming over. Quick, light the lamp.’

I stared, unable to move. A man was coming to the barn? And she knew him? ‘Who is he?’

‘I met him earlier today in town. We talked a bit but I didn’t think he’d—’

‘Well well,’ a pleasant voice said, ‘it’s the beautiful blonde Belinda. Hello again. I was about to knock at the house when I heard voices out here.’ The man who appeared in the doorway was little more than a silhouette, but I saw him lean to look around Belinda and straight at me. ‘Good evening, and what’s your name?’

‘The lamp!’ Bel urged, and drew the stranger into the barn. ‘Mr Beresford, this is Kitty Maitland. She’s sort of Land Army too.’

‘Nice to meet you, Miss Maitland. Sort of Land Army?’

Belinda had given up waiting for me to light the paraffin lamp, and bent to do it herself. ‘She’s more like the family really.’ She straightened and turned to me. ‘I met Mr Beresford in town today, and in exchange for some advice on where to stay, he gave me that wine you’re enjoying so much.’

‘Ah, glad it’s being put to good use anyway,’ Mr Beresford said, and in the newly flickering light I noticed he was quite short, but exceptionally good-looking. He held out his hand to me, and, without thinking, I put mine in it ready to shake. But he lifted it to his lips instead.

‘I’m actually rather glad I was unable to find room at the hotel you told me about, or I should never have come here and met two such stunning girls.’

I didn’t know what to say, but it didn’t matter; Bel was happy to chatter for both of us. She quickly ascertained that Mr Beresford was hoping to find accommodation under the roof of Mrs Adams, of whom he had heard such warm things. ‘I’m more than happy to pay my way,’ he said earnestly. ‘It’d just be for a night or two, then I go back to France.’

‘Wonderful!’ Bel clapped her hands together. ‘There’s a spare room at the back of the house; it’s where Mr Adams used to keep all his wet-weather clothing. It has a bed too. Only a camp bed, but—’

‘That sounds perfect,’ Mr Beresford said. ‘I’m arranging for funds to be sent through to the bank, and I expect Mrs Adams would be glad of some extra money in a couple of days when it comes through. Besides, I don’t eat much.’ He patted his flat stomach and grinned. ‘Have to stay fighting fit, after all.’

‘Are you home on leave?’ I asked, looking for his bags.

‘Yes. I’m afraid I met with some regrettable thuggery on my journey though, and practically all my belongings were stolen.’

‘Oh!’ Belinda’s face fell. ‘That’s terrible.’

‘All they left me with was that bottle of wine I’d just bought, and what I carried in my pockets. I hope you understand now why I paid for your advice in wine rather than money?’

‘Of course, why didn’t you say so before?’

He shrugged, and smiled quite charmingly. ‘Embarrassed, I suppose. A pretty girl smiles, all dressed for work and clearly as capable as they come, and it’s hard to admit one has been overcome and unable to defend one’s own property.’

‘I’m sure Mrs Adams will be glad to put you up for a night or two,’ I ventured, ‘given your sad circumstances.’

‘Best if you ask her, Kitty,’ Bel said. ‘She has such a soft spot for you. You can tell her he’s perfectly all right, and she’ll trust your judgement.’

I looked at Mr Beresford again, hoping I could trust hers. ‘I don’t know…’

She put her head on one side, a sign I recognised, and one that made me grimace. ‘Come on,’ she urged, ‘you know how she’s changed since you came to live here. She used to be so strict.’

‘She still is!’ But I surrendered, as we’d both known I would. ‘Oh, all right. I’ll go in and talk to her.’

Reluctantly I stepped out into the dark, but halfway across the yard I hesitated and almost turned back, my stomach suddenly churning as I realised I’d left her alone in there with a strange man…but Belinda was a grown woman, and a supremely confident one. I sighed. I had to stop trying to wrap the rest of the world in my own fears.

I found Mrs Adams in the creamery, a low light in the corner glowing while she shaped and patted butter into blocks.

‘All done?’ She looked beyond me. ‘Where’s Belinda?’

‘We’ve almost finished, Mrs Adams,’ I lied, hoping she wouldn’t come out to the barn to check. I explained briefly about Mr Beresford’s bad fortune, and his request for paid accommodation until it was time for him to return to his unit.

Mrs Adams pursed her lips. ‘He’s a friend of Belinda’s, you say?’

‘It seems so.’ There didn’t seem any point mentioning that Bel had only met him once; he was friendly, he’d be here two nights at the most, and then he’d move on. ‘Maybe he can help out with one or two things around the place,’ I added.

‘Well, it’ll mean Will can stop looking around as if he feels he should be doing them,’ Mrs Adams said grimly. ‘Poor boy’d do himself a mischief if we took our eye off him for five minutes.’

‘So shall I bring Mr Beresford in to meet you? Then you can make up your own mind.’

‘Yes, all right,’ she said. ‘Show him into the sitting room. I’ll be out in a few minutes. Oh, before you go back?’

‘Yes?’

‘When are you going to start calling me Frances? Evie and Will do.’

‘They’re guests,’ I said. ‘I work here.’

Mrs Adams looked sad rather than exasperated. ‘You live here, my girl. You’re my daughter now, to all intents and purposes.’

‘I do have a mother,’ I reminded her, as gently as the words allowed. She raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. She didn’t have to.

About two weeks after I’d returned from giving evidence at Oliver’s trial a letter had arrived, routed through Elise at Number Twenty-Two, the ambulance station to which Evie had moved after our own little cottage had been shelled. I’d opened it with trembling fingers, recognising the handwriting immediately, but any hope that my ordeal had touched my mother’s heart was dashed as soon as I began to read.

Katherine,

News has now reached us of the events surrounding your brother’s arrest and court martial. I wish that word had come from your hand, but of course we had to hear it by way of gossip and newspapers. To learn that you are responsible for Oliver’s downfall does not lessen our shame in his actions, it merely serves to throw some understanding upon it.

Likewise I can understand how a girl like you would be flattered by the attentions of an officer, but even if you did not make it clear to him that you had come to your senses, you are, after all, a sturdy girl and cannot have been so incapacitated that you could not protect yourself. I’m sure if you think back you will realise the truth of this. Such a man would never force himself upon a wholly unwilling partner.

Word of your ruin is already spreading among those upon whom we depend for the continuation of the family’s successful business, and those whose good opinion we value. I can only hope you are able to redeem yourself in their eyes, in the course of your chosen war duties—Oliver has no further opportunity to cover himself in glory, but you, at least, have the chance to expunge the shame you and your brother have brought on your family.

I’d lowered the letter, my face burning, my heart smashing against my ribs and making me feel hot and dizzy. Her words were stark enough, but the meaning I read behind them stole my breath; did she hope for me to be wounded in action? Perhaps I was imagining it. Surely I was? I lifted the letter and continued reading, and the words blurred in front of my eyes.

Your father and I both feel that any leave you take for the foreseeable future would be better spent away from Ecclesley, perhaps with the families of your new set of friends. This would give us the chance to ease your path back into society after the war, if you have not already muddied it too thoroughly. (Should this be the case I am certain you will see the wisdom of making a new life, better suited to your rather rebellious nature, and of finding a husband to whom purity and good name are secondary considerations.)

I felt sick now, remembering that letter and how devastated I had been to read it. Mrs Adams knew of it, but not what it said. I’d showed it to no-one; the shame had burned too brightly. For days I had wrestled with the guilt of lying, of letting them believe I was still in Belgium. I had taken up a pen countless times between then and now, poised to write the letter that would tell them the truth and cut my last hopeful tie with them, but as long as I returned home a plucky war heroine, with any luck even wounded in the service of others, my future as an Ecclesley Maitland would be assured. When I eventually wrote back, sending the letter to Elise so she could post it again from Dixmude, I found my pen had written words I couldn’t bear to hear in my own head: that I understood, and hoped that one day Mother and Father would learn to forgive me. By then I’d known there was nothing to forgive. Those who truly loved me had helped me believe that, but I felt that as long as I begged, pleaded and generally sounded like the old Kitty, Mother and Father might remember their little girl, and realise how dreadful their pronouncement had been.

Standing in the creamery at Dark River Farm I thought of my parents in their large, comfortable house in Ecclesley, and I felt an odd lightening sensation, an almost dizzying change of view. From nothing more than habit, and a fear of change, I’d been longing for a forgiveness that would never come, hoping, with a child’s yearning heart, for acceptance. It dawned on me now that I’d found that acceptance, just not in the arms of the parents who had raised me. I was wanted here, as soiled and broken as I was. I looked around, taking in the familiar warmth, the sweet smells, and the overall sense of peace that pervaded every corner of this draughty old farmhouse, and then I looked at Mrs Adams.

‘I’ll show him into in the sitting room. Frances.’

She nodded, and turned wordlessly back to her work, but her smile stayed with me all the way across the yard.

‘You won’t have cause to regret it, Mrs Adams,’ Mr Beresford said, his own smile wide with relief and gratitude. Now I could see him properly I couldn’t help being taken by the warmth of his hazel eyes, and the way he looked so earnestly at whoever he was talking to, whether it was the pretty and vivacious Belinda, the stern, inquisitive Frances, or even me.

‘I’m sure I won’t,’ Frances said. ‘Now, I’m told you don’t have anything to unpack, but maybe we can find something for you to change into amongst my Harry’s old things. He was a lot taller than you, but we have scissors, and Sally’s a decent enough hand with a needle.’

‘You’re too kind,’ Mr Beresford said, and as Frances took him off upstairs to search for something that might fit well enough, he glanced back and winked. Not at Belinda, at me. I pretended not to notice, and Bel didn’t say anything, but I thought I saw her eyes narrow anyway, and tried to think of a way to revive the companionship of our dance in the barn. But before I could, the sitting room door opened and Evie came in.

Driving the city’s ambulances between docks and hospital had given her some purpose, but it was not the same as it had been in Belgium, and I could still see the yearning in her eyes every time someone mentioned life at the Front. She would go back as soon as Will was recovered, I was sure of it. As would he. For now though, while he fought to regain his strength, and Frances kept her beady eye on him all the while, Evie worked hard doing the thing she was best at: driving.

Evie looked around her now, as she came in, her blonde hair grown back to its pre-war curls, her face tired but smiling. ‘Good evening, girls. Where is he, then?’

‘Upstairs with Mrs Adams,’ Bel said.

Evie blinked. ‘What’s he doing up there?’

‘She means Will, you idiot,’ I said to Bel. ‘He’s finishing some odd jobs in the bathroom, Evie. He won’t be long.’

‘I wish he wouldn’t try to do so much,’ Evie said, trying to sound merely exasperated, but I could hear the worry in her voice. She sat down in the chair by the window. ‘Who did you think I was talking about?’ she asked Belinda.

‘We have a house guest, just for one or two nights. A rather dashing young man called Mr Beresford.’

Evie grinned. ‘Typical. I expect you managed to charm him into thinking he needed a room.’

Bel, who worshipped both Evie and Lizzy, looked pleased but adopted a tone of indignation. ‘I did not! He was the one who smiled first, when I was in the bank. The poor man had just had his belongings stolen. Can you imagine? Anyway, we got talking, but I didn’t know about the robbery until just now. He was embarrassed to admit it to me, and just said he was looking for a place to stay.’

‘And you batted those long eyelashes at him, and offered him a room for the night?’

‘Certainly not!’ Bel said, still wearing a look of reproach. ‘I told him of a hotel in town. As it turned out he was unable to get funds right away so he couldn’t go there, but he remembered the name of the farm, and came here instead.’

‘Well, it’ll be good for Frances to have someone to help her out,’ Evie said, and smothered a yawn. ‘It’s a little bit late for an early night, but I shan’t be up long so I hope Will comes down soon, or I’ll be off to bed without seeing him at all today.’

The two of them chatted for a while, and I wanted to join in but I was starting to feel the effects of the wine again. Out in the barn it had given me a little burst of energy and amusement, but in this warm, cosily lit sitting room, with full dark fallen outside, it made me feel oddly distanced from everything. Evie and Bel’s quiet talk washed over me, and I thought fuzzily ahead to tomorrow, and the jobs I needed to do. I should really get up and go to bed, but I was too comfortable, and it was nice listening to my friends’ voices and occasional laughter.