ELIZABETH ELGIN

The Willow Pool

Dedication

For David North

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

One

Two hats. A leghorn straw and a warm winter felt, belonging to a faraway, mist-wrapped happiness. They were all she would keep of her mother; all that mattered. Meg closed her eyes and clamped her jaws tightly against tears. Yesterday she had wept, raged against the Fates for the very last time. Today she arranged her mother’s clothes into two piles: one to be discarded, the other to be given to the deserving – except the hats, of course.

She picked them up, spinning one on each forefinger, liking them because Ma had worn them year in, year out; disliking them because they were the badge of her poverty, given in charity. Dolly Blundell would not wear them again. She had laundered her last sheet, ironed her last starched shirt, washed and laid out her last corpse. Ma had gone to a heaven called Candlefold, where all happiness was and is and would be, and only someone selfish as herself, Meg thought sniffily, would want to call her back to Tippet’s Yard.

She slid her eyes to the clothes on the tabletop. Not much to show for over forty years of living, and they could go as soon as maybe. All Meg wanted was the hats, and Ma’s nine-carat gold wedding ring that hung now on the chain around her neck. Funny about that ring, when there was no man in Ma’s life; never had been.

Of course, there must have been really. If only for a brief coupling there had been a man, though who he was and where he was Meg would never know now. He’d never even had a name, which was sad. Bill Blundell was he called, or Richie or Ted – and had he been a seaman, a scholar or a scallywag?

Ma had never let herself be drawn to speak one word about him, good or bad. Nor had Nell Shaw been of any help. If Nell knew anything, she too had been stoically silent and had Meg not discovered at an early age how babies were got, she could have been forgiven for thinking Ma had found her on the doorstep of 1 Tippet’s Yard, and taken her in and worked like a slave to keep her fed and clothed.

‘Come in, Nell,’ she called, when the door knocker slammed down. But it couldn’t be her neighbour, because Nell always walked in uninvited. ‘That you, Tommy?’ Meg squinted through the inch-open door.

‘No it isn’t, and let me in, girl, or you’ll not get the pressies I’ve brought you!’

‘Kip! Kip Lewis, am I glad to see you!’ She nodded towards the table. ‘I was trying not to whinge, see. But sit yourself down and I’ll make us a brew. And leave the door open, let a bit of air in!’

And let all the misery out, and Ma’s unhappiness and that constant, frail cough. Let Dolly Blundell go to her Candlefold and be happy again.

‘Sorry about your mother,’ he said gently. ‘Amy told me. I knew she wasn’t all that good, but I hadn’t expected – well – not just yet …’

‘Nor me, Kip. It came quick, at the end. Looking back on things she’d said, I think she’d had enough. I found her there one morning early, sitting against the lavvy wall, arms round her knees; must’ve been there for hours. You might have thought she was asleep, but I knew straight away she was dead – it had been a bitterly cold night. Promise you won’t say anything to your Amy, but I think she meant to do it. She’d got that she couldn’t work, because of the coughing. She was just getting thinner and weaker, so in the end I sent for the doctor.’

She set the kettle to boil, closing her eyes tightly, determined there would be no more tears.

‘Ma wasn’t best pleased; said doctors cost money and, anyway, there was no cure for what she’d got. But the one who came was very decent; said he’d get her into a sanatorium in North Wales; told her there was a charity ward for people like her, without means. Said he could have her in, within a week …’

‘She had TB?’

‘Yes. I think she always knew it. Mind, she had a decent funeral. Always kept her burial club going, no matter what. Said she wasn’t letting the parish give her a pauper’s funeral. God! She was so cussed proud, even at the end!’

‘Don’t get upset, Meg. You did your best.’

‘I did what I could, once I was working. And I think she’d have gone into that sanatorium if the doctor hadn’t mentioned charity. There was something about her, Kip; a sort of – of – gentility. Even Nell noticed it. Maybe it was because she’d been in service, you see; housemaid to the gentry.’

‘She was different, I’ll grant you that. Amy said she always kept herself to herself.’

‘Which wasn’t hard in a dump like this.’

Apart from the entry and a sign to the left of it marked ‘Tippet’s Yard’, you could pass by and never know it was there.

‘It isn’t such a bad little place, Meg.’ He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her breathless, but he held back, sensing her need to talk. He loved her, did she but know it, though he’d never dared say so; never gone beyond hugs and goodnight kisses.

‘Not bad, but the Corporation would’ve had it pulled down if the war hadn’t come. If it hadn’t been for flamin’ Hitler, me and Ma would’ve been in a decent house now, with an inside lavvy and a garden. But where have you been, Kip? It was a long trip this time.’

‘Sydney and back by way of Panama. Never been through the canal before. It’s amazing. Fifty miles long and about a dozen locks. Australia’s a smashin’ country. Real warm and no blackout, them being a long way from the war. And when it’s Christmas there, it can get up to eighty degrees! The opposite to us, see. Upside down!’

‘Kettle’s boiled. Tea won’t be long.’

She looked up and smiled and it did things to his insides. This was the time to tell her how he felt, ask her to be his girl, but instead he said, ‘I’ve brought you a few things. There’s not such a shortage of food down under as there is here.’ He emptied the carrier bag he had brought with him.

‘Kip! Are they black market?’

‘No. All fair and square.’

‘Oooh!’ A packet of tea, a bag of sugar, tins of butter, corned beef and peaches and – oh my goodness, silk stockings! ‘Kip Lewis, you’re an old love and you’re to come to Sunday tea, and share it. I’ll ask Nell and Tommy too.’

‘By Sunday I’ll be gone again. Got the chance of another trip the same, so I signed on for it before I came ashore. The Panama run is a good one – safer than the Atlantic. And don’t look so put out, Meg Blundell! You won’t miss me!’

‘But I will! When I saw you on the doorstep I was real glad to see you, honest I was! It’s been awful these last six weeks. I just couldn’t believe Ma was gone; not even after the funeral. I’ve been putting things off, I suppose – y’know, sorting her clothes and going through her papers.’

Papers. That was a laugh. Ma’s special things, more like, locked inside a battered attaché case and, since the war started, never far from her side, night or day.

‘That’s sad, Meg.’ He took the mug she offered, then sat on the three-legged stool beside the fireplace. ‘And I interrupted you, when you’d made up your mind to tackle it.’

‘No, Kip. I wasn’t given much choice. Nell said if I didn’t shift meself and sort things out, she’d batter me! None of Ma’s things fit Nell, so she’s goin’ to find good homes for the best of them and take the rest to the jumble for me. She’s been a brick. I don’t know what I’d have done without her that morning I found Ma.’

She closed her eyes, biting her teeth together, swallowing hard on a choke of tears. Then she drew a shuddering breath, forced her lips into a smile and whispered, ‘Now you know how glad I was to see you, Kip. There’d have been another crying match if you hadn’t come when you did. I’m grateful. Honest.’

‘I’d come to ask you out, but I can see you’ve got other things on your mind. What say I leave you in peace, girl, and take you out tomorrow night? There’s a good band at the Rialto. Fancy going to a dance?’

Meg said she did, and would he call for her at seven, so they could get there early before the dance floor got crowded. And could they find a chippy afterwards, and walk to the tram stop, eating fish and chips out of newspaper?

‘The only way to eat them, sweetheart,’ he smiled. ‘I’ll be here on the dot. Want me to wear my uniform or civvies?’

‘Uniform, please.’

She liked to see him in his walking-out rig, peaked cap tilted cheekily. And besides, uniforms were all the fashion these days, and popular. Men in civilian clothes were not!

‘Then I’ll leave you to get on with things.’ He placed a finger beneath her chin, kissing her lips gently. ‘Sure you don’t want me to stay?’

‘Sure.’ This was the last thing she could do for Ma, and she needed to be alone. ‘See you tomorrow, Kip, and thanks a lot.’

She watched from the doorway as he crossed the yard, bending his shoulders as he entered the alley that led to the street. When Tippet built his yard in 1820, Meg thought, men must have been a whole lot shorter. She looked to her left to see Nell, arms folded, on the doorstep of number 2, waiting to be told about the visitor.

‘There’s some tea in the pot,’ Meg called. ‘It’ll take a drop more hot water. Want a cup?’

Nell said she did, ta very much, and wasn’t that Kip Lewis who just left?

‘It was. And I’ve done what you wanted, Nell. Just got to put them in bags.’

‘And her case? Have you opened it yet? I think you ought to. Dolly told me there was a bankbook in there, and her jewels.’

‘Ma had no jewellery, and I don’t think there’d be much in the bankbook.’ If a bankbook had ever existed, that was. ‘And I haven’t got around to the case yet. One thing at a time, eh?’

‘Then you’d best do it whilst I’m here to give moral support, as they say.’

Dolly Blundell had been a quiet one, Nell thought frowning. Never said two words when one would suffice. She had always chosen not to reply to questions concerning Mr Blundell, and had answered Nell’s probings about why the tallyman never called at number 1 with quiet dignity.

‘The tallyman doesn’t call because I don’t borrow. We manage. I’ve got money in the bank.’

Dignity. She’d learned it in service, Nell had long ago decided. How always to speak slowly and quietly; never to shriek or laugh loudly; always to hold her shoulders straight and her head high. There had been a dignity about her even in death, because who but Doll could fade away so quietly and with so little fuss? And who but Doll could look almost peaceful with her face pinched blue with cold, her shoulders leaning against a lavatory wall?

‘Saccharin for me, please.’ Nell was not a scrounger of other people’s rations, even though she had noticed the bag of sugar the moment she walked through the door. ‘An’ when we’ve drunk this, I’ll fold the clothes whilst you get on with seein’ to that case. I’ve brought a couple of carrier bags.’

Two bags, she thought, briefly sad. Her neighbour’s life stuffed into a couple of paper carriers. It was to be hoped, she thought, all at once her cheerful self again, there’d be more to smile about when Meg got that dratted case opened.

‘Cheers, queen!’ She lifted her cup in salute.

‘Cheers!’ Meg arranged her lips into a smile, liking the blowzy, generous-hearted woman, even though she drank gin when she could afford it, and swore often, and took money, some said, from gentlemen. Nell’s man had not come back from the last war, and she had remained a widow. Marriageable men were thin on the ground after the Great War, so Nell had become a survivor and laughed when most women would have cried.

‘And thank the good Lord the clocks have gone forward, an’ we’ve got the decent weather to come, and light nights.’

To Nell’s way of thinking the blackout was the worst thing civilians had to endure; worse even than food rationing. In winter, the blackout was complete and unnatural. Not a chink of light to be seen at windows; streetlamps turned off for the duration and not so much as a match to be struck to light a ciggy outdoors, because Hitler’s bombers, when they raided Liverpool, were able to pick out even the glow of a cigarette end. If you had a ciggy to light, that was.

‘Think I’ll put a match to the fire.’ Early April nights could be chilly. ‘And I suppose I’d better open Ma’s case. I’ve put it off too long.’

‘You have! What are you bothered about?’

‘Don’t know.’ Meg reached into the glass pot on the mantelshelf for the tiny key. ‘Nell – did Ma ever tell you about my father? I could get nothing out of her, so in the end I stopped askin’. Was he a scally or somethink?’

‘Dunno. Doll made it plain that the subject of your father wasn’t open for discussion. I never even knew if her and him was married.’

‘But she wore a wedding ring!’

‘Weddin’ rings come cheap, and ten bob well spent if it buys respectability. Your mother never said he’d been killed in the trenches either.’

‘But she wouldn’t say that when I was born four years after the war ended. I wish she’d told me, though. Had you ever thought, Nell, that my father could be a millionaire or a murderer? It’s awful not knowing, and all the time wondering if you’re a bastard or not.’

‘Now that’s enough of talk like that! Your ma wouldn’t have allowed it, and neither will I! Dolly asked me to look out for you, once she got so badly, so it’s me as’ll be in control, like, till you’re twenty-one. Doll wore a wedding ring, so that says you’re legitimate, Meg Blundell, and never forget it!’

‘OK. I won’t. And I’m glad there’s someone I can turn to, though I won’t be a bother to you.’

‘You’d better not be, and you know what I’m gettin’ at. No messin’ around with fellers; that kind of messin’, I mean. And where has Kip Lewis been, then?’

‘Australia. He brought me those things.’ She nodded towards the table. ‘You and Tommy are to come to Sunday tea. We’ll have corned beef hash, and peaches for pudding. How will that suit you?’

‘Very nicely, and thanks for sharin’ your luck, girl. Tommy’ll be made up too. Poor little bugger. He’s that frail he looks as if the next puff of wind’ll blow him over. Sad he never wed. But are you going to open that case or aren’t you?’

Nell was curious. Any normal girl, she reasoned, would’ve done it weeks ago. But Meg Blundell was like her mother in a lot of ways: quiet, sometimes, and given to stubbornness. And besides, there really could be a bankbook locked away, and heaven only knew what else!

‘I suppose I must.’ Meg gazed at the tiny key in the palm of her hand. ‘I don’t want to, for all that. I don’t want to find out – anything …’

She and Ma had been all right as they were and all at once she didn’t want to know about the man who fathered her. And when she turned that key it might be there, staring her in the face, and she might be very, very sorry.

She fumbled the key into the lock, turning it reluctantly. In the fleeting of a second she imagined she might find a coiled snake there, ready to bite; a spider, big as the palm of her hand. Or nothing of any importance – not even a bankbook.

She lifted the lid, sniffing because she expected the smell of musty papers; closing her eyes when the faint scent of lavender touched her nostrils. She glanced down to see a fat brown envelope, addressed to Dorothy Blundell, 1 Tippet’s Yard, Liverpool 3, Lancashire. The name had been crossed through in a different ink and the words Margaret Mary Blundell written in her mother’s hand. The envelope was tied with tape and the knot secured with red sealing wax. Meg lifted her eyes to those of the older woman.

‘You goin’ to see what’s in it, girl?’ Nell ran her tongue round her lips.

‘N-no. Not just yet.’ The package looked official and best dealt with later. When she was alone.

‘There might be money in it!’

‘No. Papers, by the feel of it.’ Ma’s marriage lines? Her own birth certificate? Photographs? Letters, even? ‘Ma would’ve spent it if there’d been money. I – I’ll leave it, Nell, if you don’t mind.’

‘Please yourself, I’m sure.’ Nell was put out. ‘Nuthin’ to do with me, though your ma left a will, I know that for certain. Me an’ Tommy was witness to it!’

‘But she had nothink to leave.’ Meg pulled in her breath.

‘Happen not. But to my way of thinking, if all you have to leave is an ’at and an ’atpin and a pound in yer purse, then you should set it down legal who you want it to go to! Dolly wrote that will just after the war started; said all she had was to go to her only child Margaret Mary, and me and Tommy read it, then put our names to it. Like as not it’s in that envelope. Best you open it.’

‘No. Later.’ Quickly Meg took out another envelope. It had Candlefold Hall written on it and she knew at once it held photographs. To compensate for her neighbour’s disappointment she handed it to her. ‘You open it, Nell.’

‘Suppose this is her precious Candlefold.’ Mollified, Nell squinted at the photograph of a large, very old house surrounded by lawns and flowerbeds.

‘There’s a lot of trees, Nell.’ It really existed, then, Ma’s place that was heaven on earth. ‘Looks like it’s in the country.’

‘Hm. If them trees was around here they’d have been chopped down long since, for burnin’! And look at this one; must be the feller that ’ouse belonged to.’ She turned over another photograph to read Mr & Mrs Kenworthy, in writing she knew to be Dolly Blundell’s. ‘They look a decent couple. Bet they were worth a bob or two. And who’s this then – the old granny?’

A plump, middle-aged lady wearing a cape and black bonnet sat beside an ornamental fountain, holding a baby.

‘No. It’s the nanny,’ Meg smiled. ‘Nanny Boag and Master Marcus, 1917, Ma’s written.’ Her heart quickened, her cheeks burned. All at once they were looking at her mother’s life in another world; at a big, old house in the country; at Ma’s employers and their infant son.

Hastily Meg scanned each photograph and snapshot, picking out one of a group of servants arranged either side of a broad flight of steps – and standing a little apart the butler, was it, and the housekeeper? And there stood Ma, all straight and starched, staring ahead as befitted the occasion.

Another snap, faded to sepia now, of three smiling maids in long dresses and pinafores and mobcaps, in a cobbled yard beside a pump trough.

‘See, Nell! Norah, Self & Gladys. That’s Ma, in the middle. And look at this one!’

Tents on Candlefold’s front lawn, and stalls and wooden tables and chairs, and Ma and the two other housemaids in pretty flowered frocks and straw hats. Only this time the inscription was in a different hand and read. Candlefold 1916. Garden Party for wounded soldiers. Dolly Blundell, Norah Bentley, Gladys Tucker. Her mother, sixteen years old. Dolly Blundell! So Ma had never married!

‘What do you make of that, Nell?’ Her mouth had gone dry. ‘Ma’s name was –’

‘Ar. Seems it’s always been Blundell.’

‘So whoever my father was, he didn’t have the decency to marry her. I am illegitimate, Nell!’

Tears filled her eyes. When she hadn’t been sure – not absolutely sure – it somehow hadn’t mattered that maybe she was born on the wrong side of the sheets. But to see it written down so there was no argument about it – all at once it did matter! Someone had got a pretty young housemaid into trouble, then taken off and left her to it. And that girl became old long before her time, with nothing to lean on but her pride!

‘There now, queen.’ Nell pulled Meg close, hushing her, patting her. ‘Your ma wasn’t the first to get herself into trouble, and she won’t be the last. She took good care of you, now didn’t she? Didn’t put you into an orphanage, nor nuthin’. And if the little toerag that got you upped and left, then Doll was better off without him, if it’s my opinion you’re askin’.’

‘I’m sorry I opened that case. I never wanted to.’

‘Happen not, but at least we’ve got one thing straight; somethin’ your ma chose to keep quiet about. An’ don’t think I’m blaming her! She brought you up decent and learned you to speak proper. You’d not have got a job in a shop if she hadn’t.’

‘Edmund and Sons? That dump!’ Years behind the times, it was, and people not so keen to part with their clothing coupons for the frumpy fashions old man Edmund stocked. ‘I’d set my heart on the Bon Marche, y’know. Classy, the Bon is.’

The Bon Marche had thick carpets all over; the ground floor smelled of free squirts of expensive scent, but you had to talk posh to work there.

‘You were glad enough to go to Edmunds, Meg Blundell. Your wages made a difference to your ma.’

‘Ten bob a week, and commission! Girls my age are earning fifty times that on munitions!’

‘So go and make bombs and bullets.’

‘I might have to, Nell. Trade’s been bad since clothes rationing started. The old man’s going to be sacking staff before so very much longer.’

‘Then worry about it when he does! Now are you going to get on with it?’ Nell glanced meaningfully at the attaché case. ‘Your mother’s will is in there somewhere.’

‘You’re sure?’ Meg slid the photographs back into the envelope. ‘I know she used to talk about a bankbook; said if we were careful with the pennies we’d go and live in the country one day.’

‘That’s daydreamin’. We’re talkin’ about fact – like all that’s in this house, for one thing, and the bedding and –’

‘There’s not a lot of that left. The people from the health department took Ma’s mattress and bedding when they came to stove the place out; you know they did!’

‘They always do, with TB. You were lucky they didn’t take more! But there it is, girl! It’s marked on the envelope, see? Will. Told you, didn’t I?’ Nell clenched her fists, so eager were her fingers to light on it. ‘And there’s more besides; that bankbook, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Nell was right, Meg thought, picking out two smaller envelopes, glancing inside them. Ma’s will, and the bankbook! It made her wonder – just briefly, of course – if this was the first time Nell Shaw had seen inside the case.

‘So is this what you and Tommy signed?’ Meg offered the sheet of paper. ‘All I own is for my daughter, Margaret Mary Blundell. Straight and to the point, wouldn’t you say?’

Her words sounded flippant, though she hadn’t meant them to. It was just so sad that it made her want to weep again.

‘Your ma wasn’t one for wasting words. Keep it safe, girl. That’s a legal document, properly witnessed and dated. And you’d better open the bankbook!’

‘Yes.’

To be told of the existence of a bankbook had always been a comfort in a strange sort of way. Not many in these parts, Meg had been forced to admit, would have one; wouldn’t have a magic carpet that might one day take them to a cottage in the country. It had been something to cling to when bad times got worse. To return to the countryside had been Ma’s shining dream. She had often talked about how clean the air was; how sweet the washing smelled when you took it from the line. They would have a little garden, one day. Dreams. Ma had had them in plenty.

‘You want to know how rich I am, then?’

‘Of course I do!’ Nell was past pretence.

‘Four pounds, eighteen and sixpence.’ Meg’s whisper broke into a sob. ‘Oh, God love you, Ma!’ Ma had thought near on five pounds was riches, yet it wouldn’t have paid for the funeral tea – if they’d had one; if food hadn’t been rationed.

Nell Shaw gazed disbelieving at the figures, then, swallowing on her disappointment, said, ‘I told you so, didn’t I? Dolly did have something put by, though only the good Lord knows how she did it, and her never once in debt to the tallyman. Is there anything else, Meg?’

‘Only her jewels.’ A string of pearl beads, a marcasite brooch in the shape of a D, a wristwatch and a lavender bag, daintily stitched. Meg held it to her nose. ‘Suppose the lavender came from Candlefold garden.’ Tears still threatened. ‘Would you like the brooch, Nell – a keepsake?’

‘No, ta. Best you should have it, girl. I wouldn’t mind the lavender bag, though.’ A glinty D-brooch wouldn’t serve to remind her of Dolly as much as the sweet-smelling sachet. She smiled, seeing in her mind’s eye a fair-haired girl hanging stems of lavender to dry in the sun, then sewing them into muslin.

‘I suppose that tea’s gone cold? Never mind. See if you can squeeze another cup. Think I’ll have a ciggy.’ She gazed lovingly at the cigarette she took from her pinafore pocket. ‘Terrible, innit, when They cut down your fags? This one’s my last. Think I’ll nip to the pub later on; see if they’ve got any under the counter. Landlord was saying that his beer supplies are going to be cut; something to do with the breweries not being allowed enough sugar. Things are coming to a pretty pass when They start interferin’ with the ale. Bluddy Hitler’s got a lot to answer for!’

She took in a deep gulp of smoke, holding it blissfully, blowing it out in little huffs.

‘I don’t know how you can do that.’ For the first time that day Meg laughed. ‘Swallow smoke, I mean. I once had a puff at a cigarette and I nearly choked!’

‘So don’t start. Once you get the taste for them you’re hooked, and the scarcer they get in the shops, the more you want one! I never thought I’d live to see the day I’d queue half an hour for five bleedin’ ciggies!’ Nell threw back her head and laughed, then returned her gaze to the little case. ‘Anything else in there?’

‘I know what there isn’t. There doesn’t seem to be a rent book, Nell. Will the landlord let me stay on in the house, do you think?’

‘Dunno. Best you say nuthin’. If he doesn’t find out your ma’s passed on, he’ll be none the wiser, will he? Where did she usually keep it?’

‘I don’t know. Come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen one. All Ma said every Saturday morning was, “That’s the rent taken care of and the burial club seen to. What’s left in my purse is ours, Meg.” I don’t even know how much she paid, or who she paid it to.’

‘Well, my ’ouse is five shillings. Yours would be a bit more, bein’ bigger.’

‘I should’ve asked, I suppose. I just presumed it was paid Saturday mornings, though I never saw anyone call for it. But I’ll have to find that book and try to catch up with the arrears. It must be at least six weeks behind.’ She didn’t like the house in Tippet’s Yard, but she didn’t want throwing onto the street until she was good and ready to go!

‘And that looks like the lot – except for this.’ She picked up a blue envelope. Perhaps it was the missing rent book, though she doubted it, even as she pushed a finger inside it.

‘Oh! Look!’ She felt the colour leaving her cheeks and a sick feeling on her tongue. ‘It’s my birth certificate. I never knew I had one.’

‘Everybody’s got to have one It’s the law!’ Nell caught the paper as it slipped from Meg’s agitated fingers. ‘Oh, my Gawd! Name of mother, Dorothy Blundell. Name of father – not known. Place of birth, Candlefold Hall, Nether Barton, Lancashire. Well …’

‘So I am illegitimate, in spite of the wedding ring! Wouldn’t you have thought there’d have been a letter from Ma, or something? But not one word of explanation, even at the end!’

‘Maybe not, but what was you expectin’ – an apology? So your mother and father wasn’t wed; does that make it the end of the world? And if it’s explanations you’re lookin’ for, then that birth certificate says it all! You thought you was born here, in Tippet’s Yard, but it was at that Candlefold place, so what you’ve got to ask yourself is why!’

‘Exactly! Why, for one thing, didn’t you tell me, Nell?’

‘Because I flamin’ didn’t know! Your ma had been living at number 1 the best part of a year when I moved into the yard! I just took it you was born in this house.’

‘Well I wasn’t, it seems, and it doesn’t make sense. Why, will you tell me, when she’d got herself into trouble, wasn’t Ma thrown out, because that’s what usually happened, wasn’t it? Unmarried mothers were thrown onto the street with their shame – or into the workhouse! They still are, even today!’

‘I’ve got to admit,’ Nell frowned, ‘that it’s all a bit queer – unless, mind, those toffs she worked for was decent people, and they helped her out.’

‘You think that’s likely?’

‘N-no. But your ma was a housemaid at Candlefold Hall, that we do know, and your birth certificate says you was born there, so there’s no getting away from that. Seems they didn’t show your ma the door – well, not until after she’d had you, Meg.’

‘All right. So maybe the Kenworthys were decent – Ma always spoke of the place as if it were – well –’

‘Flippin’ ’eaven,’ Nell supplied bluntly. ‘But any place would have seemed like heaven, once you’re reduced to livin’ in Tippet’s Yard!’

‘But Ma loved working there; she longed to go back. She once told me that the day she first saw Candlefold was one of the best she would ever know; said she’d never seen so many fields and trees and flowers. I don’t think she ever wanted to leave there.’

‘Then it’s a pity some fly-by-night got her in the family way, ’cause she never knew much happiness in this place. Where was your ma born, by the way?’

‘I don’t know. All she told me was that she was sent into domestic service as soon as she was old enough. She didn’t ever talk about anything before that. Not once. Her life began – and ended, I think – at Candlefold.’

‘There must’ve been a lot of poverty in Liverpool once.’ Nell threw a minute cigarette end into the fireplace. ‘People had so many kids they was sometimes glad to put them into orphanages, or send them to the nuns. At least Dolly kept you, girl. Happen she knew how shaming charity was.’

‘I think she must have, Nell. And I wasn’t being nasty when I said Ma should have left a letter. She worked her fingers to the bone for me, and if she didn’t want me to know about when she was a little girl, or how I was got, then that’s her business, I suppose. It makes you think, though …’

‘Ar.’ Nell got to her feet. ‘Don’t do to go dwelling on how exactly it was, if you get my meanin’.’

‘Which dark corner, you mean? Which hedgeback, and with who? And if he told her that if she loved him she would let him – you know …’

‘Let him have a bit of what he should’ve waited for till he’d wed her? Ar, men always said that; always will. It’s the nature of the beast, see?’

‘Kip Lewis hasn’t tried it on!’

‘Then just wait, girl! Even the best of them are after only one thing!’ She paused, red-cheeked, wondering if this was the time to warn Dolly’s girl how easy it was to get babies, and how difficult they were to get rid of! ‘Anyway, it’ll be up to you to put your foot down, Meg Blundell. You’ll never get a husband if you’re easy. Men don’t run after a tram once they’ve caught it! But I’ll be off to find a few ciggies, if you’re sure you’re all right?’ She picked up the carrier bags.

‘I’m fine, Nell – or at least I will be when I’ve weighed things up. Let’s face it, I didn’t catch Ma’s TB, I’ve got a job and a roof over my head. Things aren’t all bad, are they?’

‘Not when you look at it like that,’ Nell laughed. ‘G’night then, girl. God bless.’

Meg watched from the doorway until the neighbour who all at once had become her legal guardian crept on slippered feet into her house. The sky was darkening; best she should close the door, draw the blackout curtains. She ranged her eyes around Tippet’s Yard. Opposite, the little houses of Nell Shaw and Tommy Todd, and next to them, where numbers 4 and 5 once stood, an empty area. Ma had tried to dry washing there, but the clothes were covered in chimney smuts in no time at all, so she had given it up as a bad job and dried them indoors.

Beside the empty area was the coalhouse, where the coal rations were stored carefully in three separate corners, never to be borrowed from, nor stolen from. You had to be honest, Meg considered. It wasn’t right to steal from your own kind – especially when coal was rationed now to one bag a week for each household.

At the end of the yard were two lavatories and beside them, a washhouse. Once, Ma said, there had been earth closets and a midden, but the landlord was ordered by the Corporation to put in proper sanitation. So now there were water closets and the midden concreted over and a washhouse built – and the rents increased by a shilling a week!

But you got nothing for nothing, Meg shrugged, shutting the door on the miserable yard that had been condemned years ago. And Nell and Tommy were decent folk to have as neighbours.

She thought again about the rent book, then pushed it from her mind. She would worry about it tomorrow. Tonight, there was the sealed package to open, and only heaven knew what she would find inside it. Just to think of cutting the tape and breaking the seal made her uneasy.

‘Right then, Meg Blundell!’ She squared her shoulders and tilted her chin as her mother had done so often in the past. ‘Shift yourself! The blackout, a cup of cocoa and then the fat envelope!’

In that order, and no messing!

Tommy Todd paused beside his coal heap, listening to the sound of Nell Shaw’s slippers as they slithered and slapped across the yard.

Nell and Dolly Blundell, he considered, carefully selecting pieces of coal, had been strange stablemates. Nell as rough and common as the milkman’s horse; Mrs Blundell softly spoken and ladylike – a filly with a bit of breeding. Yet the two became friends the day Nell moved into number 2, and remained friends in spite of Nell’s ways.

There was, he supposed, no accounting for taste, and not for anything would he give voice to his opinions. After all, Nell washed his Sunday shirt every fortnight without asking for payment and he, in turn, swept Nell’s doorstep every week, and the cobbles outside; Mrs Blundell’s too, since she’d been responsible, till she got badly, for the ironing. He also took it upon himself to keep the yard tidy and free from tomcats. That, he considered, was his duty done and his shirt dues paid.

Through the open door of the coalhouse he heard the door of number 2 being closed, then shrugged and walked to his house with the few lumps of coal that must last until he went to bed. The sooner it was used, the sooner he went to his bed. It was as simple as that.

Only when heavy black curtains had shut out the April night; only when she had slowly sipped saccharin-sweet cocoa and painstakingly washed and dried the cup, did Meg break the seal of the package.

She found only papers and let her breath go with relief. Papers relating to her mother’s indentures, set up and signed when young Dorothy Blundell first went to work at Candlefold? Or maybe papers concerning Ma’s childhood?

But domestic servants were not apprenticed, and why should Ma’s parents give her a bundle of documents when all they had wanted was to be rid of her? Meg focused her eyes reluctantly on the flowing handwriting.

THIS CONVEYANCE is made the 1st day of October one thousand nine hundred and twenty-two BETWEEN CANDLEFOLD ESTATES NETHER BARTON IN THE COUNTY OF LANCASTER (hereinafter called ‘the Vendor’) and DOROTHY BLUNDELL SPINSTER DOMICILED AT CANDLEFOLD HALL NETHER BARTON IN THE COUNTY OF LANCASTER (hereinafter called ‘the Purchaser’).

THE VENDOR is seized of the property hereinafter described and has agreed to sell the same to the Purchaser for the price of one shilling (12d) and that the said property shall be vested in the Purchaser …

‘Oh, my Gawd!’ Breathless almost, Meg read on. It looked like Ma had bought this house from the people at Candlefold for a shilling! But who in his right mind sold a house – even a slum like this – for a bob! More charity! Ma had been given a place to live – damn near given, mind you – just five weeks after the birth of her child at Candlefold Hall!

Dry-mouthed, Meg made for the door and Nell, then stopped in her tracks. No! Nell must not know. No one must know yet! Before she said a word to anyone, those pompous words must be read and read again, so there could be no mistaking that the house belonged to Ma, and if what was in that package really meant what she thought it did, then her search for a rent book was over an’ all, because people who own a house don’t pay rent.

The rent, Ma always said, had been taken care of. And so it had, but by the charity of John Kenworthy, Landowner, whose signature appeared with Ma’s at the end of the document. And now, Meg thought incredulously, it would seem that this house was truly hers; willed to her by her mother. Meg Blundell’s house! No landlord to pay six weeks’ arrears to; no bailiff to throw her out!

The fingers on the mantel clock, the only really decent thing Ma had owned, pointed to five minutes to midnight before Meg had read and read again the conveyance and deeds; dry, legal phrases so difficult to make sense of. Yet even so, one thing stood out clearly from all the gobbledegook: 1 Tippet’s Yard had been sold to her mother for a shilling before she left Candlefold. And, far from throwing her onto the street, the gentleman she worked for had allowed her to remain there to have her baby, then put a roof over her head! It was queer, to say the least, and Meg wanted to know why, because nobody, not even people as decent as Ma made out the Kenworthys to be, gave away a house. Not without good reason.

Then all at once the curiosity, the disbelief and anger gave way to tears, and they flowed hot and unhindered down her cheeks.

‘Oh, Ma,’ she whispered. ‘Why didn’t you think to tell me? Couldn’t you, before you went out into the freezin’ cold and sat down outside the lavvies to die, have told me just who I am?’

They left the Rialto when the floor began to get crowded and the dance hall too warm for comfort.

‘You’re a smashing dancer.’ Meg laced her little finger with Kip’s as they walked. ‘I can do fancy footwork with you better’n any other bloke.’

‘That’s because we fit, kind of.’ He didn’t like to think of her dancing with other men. ‘You and me get on well in most things.’

‘Mm. And oh, wouldn’t you know!’ They arrived at the fish and chip shop to read, with dismay, the notice: ‘SORRY. NO FAT. OPEN FRIDAY.’

She should have expected it! Chippies ran out of fat all the time, because fat was severely rationed; shops ran out of lipsticks and face creams too. Hardware shops ran out of mops, brushes, floor polish and paint all the time, and wallpaper had ceased to exist long ago!

‘Never mind – will this make up for it?’ He tilted her chin and kissed her gently.

‘No!’ she teased.

‘Then maybe another …?’ He folded her in his arms, this time with lips more demanding, and because she liked him and had had a lovely time dancing with him, she returned his kisses with warmth.

‘I’m going to miss you, Kip.’ She pulled away from him.

‘And I’ll miss you, sweetheart; more’n you think. Be my girl, Meg? I love you a lot …’

‘Kip, I love you too, but you wouldn’t want me to be your steady, would you? What I mean is –’ she took a deep breath – ‘you’re the nicest man I know, but I’m not ready for courtin’ seriously; not just yet.’

‘So there’s some other bloke you fancy?’

‘No! There’s no one! But I don’t want to be tied to a promise just yet. I still haven’t got myself straight over Ma. There’s a lot of things to be sorted – mostly to do with money.’

‘But I could make you an allotment out of my pay and the shipping line would send it to you every month. You’d never go short – if we were married, I mean.’

‘Married!’

Oh, my Lor’! Here was Kip proposing marriage, near as dammit, and her not ready for it! Not by a long chalk she wasn’t! Just to think of it made her insides churn, because Nell had put her finger on it only last night! Men were out for one thing, so it was best they wed you first! And the trouble was that she wasn’t ready for that sort of thing, because that was how babies happened and she didn’t love Kip enough to have his child; not when you had to do that to get one! Kip was nice and kind, good to dance with and to kiss, but her and him in a double bed making babies was another matter altogether!

‘Don’t look so shocked! I’m not askin’ you to marry me – not just yet. But I’d like you at least to think about it. Tell you what – why don’t I look out for a ring? I know you can’t get engagement rings here any more, but I’ve seen plenty in Sydney. Can’t we give it a try, Meg?’

His words were soft and urgent, his eyes tender, and she came near to hating herself when she said, ‘Kip – I’m nineteen. I don’t know my own mind yet, except that you’re one of my best friends and I like being with you. But it wouldn’t be fair if I made a promise I wasn’t sure I could keep. Don’t go spending your money on a ring – not just yet? Give me time?’

‘OK. If that’s the way you want it, I’ll have to take no for an answer. But I’ll buy a ring, no matter what, and every time I come ashore I shall ask you to wear it – so be warned!’

He was smiling again, and she sensed an easing of the tension between them and was so relieved that she reached up on tiptoe and kissed him gently.

‘I’d like to be your best girl, Kip, if that’s all right with you, but I’m not ready, just yet, to start thinking about – well – serious matters. Not with any man, I’m not.’

‘Then when you do, sweetheart, be sure that I’ll be top of the queue! And don’t worry. I’d never ask for anything you weren’t willing to give. I’d wait, Meg. I’d respect your feelings.’

‘Then what more could a girl ask for?’ she said, remembering the way it had been for a housemaid called Dolly Blundell. ‘And if we don’t get a move on, we’re goin’ to miss the last tram to Lime Street!’ Smiling, she took his hand, hesitating just long enough to whisper, ‘And thanks, Kip, for what you’ve just said. I do care for you – only be patient?’

That night Meg thought a lot about Kip Lewis and about the way he loved her. Yet she, deceitful little faggot, had hemmed and hawed and asked for time, saying she was too young; not over Ma’s death; didn’t know her own mind. But it was none of those things, because truth was that she was in a muddle still about Ma and the people at Candlefold Hall, and a legal document in which her mother was hereinafter referred to as the Purchaser.

She had told no one about the deeds, yet before much longer Nell Shaw must know, because the enormity of her inheritance must be shared with someone; the mystery of it too. So tomorrow, after she had said goodbye to Kip and wished him Godspeed and a safe landfall, she would show Nell what was inside the bulky packet; would hand it to her casually – ‘So what do you make of this, eh?’ – then watch her face as the truth dawned.

What was more, Meg fretted, punching her pillow, turning it over, Nell must promise never to say a word about it; especially to Kip. It was bad enough, she sighed, being illegitimate; what would people around here think if it got about that Dolly Blundell hadn’t been entitled to the wedding ring she wore and had been given a house into the bargain? Ma’s reputation would be in the gutter!

Yet her mother’s good name would be safe with Nell. Nell had been her friend and wouldn’t blab, though what she would say when she got her hands on the packet of deeds was anybody’s guess!

‘Well! Bugger me!’ Nell said. ‘It makes you think, dunnit? I mean – givin’ her an ’ouse for a silver shillin’. It isn’t on, is it …?’ She laid the documents on the kitchen table and fished in her pocket for a cigarette. ‘Tell you what, girl. How about puttin’ the kettle on? A cup of tea is what we need, and sod the rations!’

‘A bit of a shock, Nell?’

‘Not half! Now don’t get me wrong, Meg Blundell, but those Kenworthy folk must have been plaster saints, or sumthin’! I mean who, will you tell me, looks after a girl who was nuthin’ to them but a paid servant, doesn’t show her the door when she’s been left high and dry and in the club, then gives her somewhere to live into the bargain?’

She drew hard on her cigarette, sucking smoke through her teeth, shaking her head in bewilderment.

‘So now you know how I felt.’ Meg stirred the teapot noisily. ‘When I’d got over the shock I thought the same as you. Were those people at Candleford saints or sinners? Did someone have a guilty conscience? Was Ma paid off? I went over it and over it, and y’know what, Nell? I decided that they were decent, even if they were toffs, because Ma never spoke of them with anything but respect and she loved Candlefold till her dying day.’

‘So we let well alone! Doll’s gone, and we don’t speak ill of the dead nor think ill either. If your ma had wanted us to know she’d have told us, so we respect her wishes – say nuthin’ to nobody! Don’t give the gossips bullets to fire – is that understood?’

‘Understood.’ Gravely Meg nodded. ‘And I appreciate you sticking up for Ma.’

‘She’d have done the same for me.’

‘She would, but for all that, Nell – and strictly between you and me – aren’t you just a bit curious? I know I am. I’d give a lot to get to the bottom of it, though where I would start, I don’t know.’

‘At the beginning, I’d say – if you’re really set on knowing. But before you start anything, Meg Blundell, ask yourself if you’re goin’ to be prepared for what you might find.’

‘What d’you mean? Just what might I find, will you tell me?’

‘Dunno. But if you go poking and prying you might find something you didn’t bargain for. When you start turnin’ over stones, something nasty might just creep from under one of them – see? And before you go all toffee-nosed on me, remember I’m on Doll’s side, no matter what.’

‘So if I was to try, Nell, would you be on my side, an’ all?’

‘You know I would, ’cause, let’s face it, I’m as curious as you are, truth known.’

‘So where, if you were me,’ Meg smiled, all at once relieved to have Nell’s blessing, ‘would you say the beginning is?’

‘Can’t rightly say.’ She took one last, long draw on the cigarette end, then threw it into the hearth. ‘The more I think about it, the more baffled I am. Happen by tomorrow I’ll have had a bit of time to take it in. But you’re not serious, are you?’

‘I’m not going to seriously jump in with both feet, if that’s what you mean, but I’d like to know more about the house I was born in and the people who looked after Ma, and stood by her. You can’t blame me for that, now can you?’

‘Suppose not – but be careful. You and your ma got on all right for the best part of twenty years, so ask yourself if raking over the past is what she’d have wanted – bearin’ in mind that she leaned over backwards to keep it from you!’

‘Yes, and bearing in mind that she must have known things would come into the open when she died, don’t you think Ma would’ve understood how curious I am about her precious Candlefold?’

‘So what do you aim to do?’

‘Like you said, the best place to begin is at the beginning, Nell. Once, Candlefold was a fairytale place to me. Ma would talk about it like it was all from a storybook, and I never quite knew if she was making it up or not. But suddenly it’s real. It’s the house I was born in, and the first thing I’m goin’ to do is go to the library and have a look in the atlas for Nether Barton!’

‘Up to you, I’m sure.’ Nell rose to her feet to glare at the pile of offending documents. ‘Think I’ll get me ’ead down for a couple of hours. What time are you expecting me an’ Tommy?’

‘Tea is at six,’ Meg smiled primly.

‘I came by some pickled onions the other day,’ Nell said, hand on the door knob. ‘“I’ve got something for you, Mrs Shaw,” the grocer said, all smarmy. Then he went under the counter and brought out the onions, would you believe? From the look on his face I thought I was in for half a pound of butter – but there you go! You’re welcome to them. They’ll go down nicely with corned beef hash. Sorry I can’t bring a spot of cream for the peaches, girl! See you, then!’

And throwing back her head she laughed until her shoulders shook.

The table was laid with Ma’s best cloth, the cutlery placed neatly. Potatoes cooked gently on the stove; the peaches lay in a glass dish on the cold slab in the pantry. Meg sighed with delight. This was her first party ever, thanks to Kip’s bounty. Pity he couldn’t be here too.

She closed her eyes and sent her good wishes to him wherever he was now. Probably still anchored in the rivermouth, waiting for the convoy to gather. They were, he’d said, going part of the way under escort; stopping at the Azores to take on fresh water, then on to the Canary Islands alone, and across to Panama. SS Bellis was a new ship, and fast – could outrun any U-boat, just as the Queen Mary and the Mauretania did. Once they were free of the slow-moving convoy they could get their revs up, and go like the clappers! Kip had done more sea miles than most young men, Meg thought with pride. Kip loved her and she wished she could love him back; yet love, real love, made her afraid, because things could get out of control, Nell said, and then where were you?

‘Sorry, Kip,’ she whispered to the clock on the mantelshelf. ‘Take care of yourself, mind …’

She hoped he wouldn’t buy a ring in Sydney.

‘Now that,’ said Tommy Todd, ‘was a smashing meal. You didn’t tell us you were a good cook, Meg.’

‘I’m not. It was something easy, and a tin of peaches doesn’t take a lot of opening. But thanks for the compliment, and thanks for coming.’

‘It was kindly of you to ask, girl.’

‘And kind of Kip to provide it for us! Now would you both like to sit by the fire, whilst I clear away?’

‘I’ll help wash the dishes,’ Nell offered, sinking deeper into the chair that had always been Dolly’s.

‘Thanks all the same, but I’ll see to everything after you’ve gone. Give me something to do with myself. I miss Ma most in the evenings, y’know.’

‘I miss my feller all the time,’ Nell sighed, ‘for all it’s more’n twenty years since he was took, God rest him …’

‘That was a terrible war.’ Tommy gazed into the fireglow. ‘The day I got my Blighty wound I was mighty relieved, I can tell you.’

‘Relieved?’ Meg gasped. ‘To get wounded?’

‘Oh, my word yes! When you was wounded bad they shipped you to Blighty, to England. It was worth a badly leg to get away from those trenches. Thought I was in ’eaven in that ’ospital. Clean beds, no more fighting, meals reg’lar. I was lucky.’

‘So how did you get that limp?’ Nell demanded.

‘Was too small for the infantry, me being a stable lad-cum-apprentice jockey, so they put me in a horse regiment. Horses were used a lot in that war. More reliable than motors. Motors was always getting bogged down in winter. We was hauling a big gun – took six horses – and I was on the lead horse. We started getting shelled, and copped one. Horse was killed – went down on top of me.

‘By the time I was fit for active service again the war was over. Kids skit me when I walk past, but I’d rather have a limp and an army pension than what Nell’s man got. Life was cheap in that war. I was one of the lucky ones.’

‘Ar.’ Nell nodded, hooking a tear away with her knuckle. ‘Folks made a fuss at Dunkirk; said it was awful our army retreatin’ like they did, but if I’d been a feller I’d have been glad to get out of that country. No good to us, France isn’t!’

Seeing Nell’s trembling bottom lip, Tommy smiled, diving his hand into his jacket pocket, offering five cigarettes. ‘I stood in a queue for these! Thank God I don’t smoke. I was always a little runt, and folk said that smoking stunted your growth, see. I never growed over five feet, for all that! Go on, Nell. You’re welcome to them!’

Tippet’s Yard, Meg thought later as she washed dishes and scrubbed pans, was an airless, run-down slum that should have been knocked down years ago. Liverpool was a dump, but Liverpudlians were the salt of the earth, and people like little Limping Tommy and brash, buxom Nell made life worth living in Tippet’s Yard. You had to count your blessings, Ma always said, and that, Meg decided, was what she would try to do, because there were a lot of people worse off than she was!

Yet for all that, she knew that this city would never hold her; that somehow, some day, she would find Candlefold. And when she did, she would find Ma’s heaven; that special somewhere she must have yearned for, the night she walked out into that cold, mucky yard to die.

Candlefold. Place of dreams.

Two

The first day of May had been like most other days. Ordinary. A postcard from Kip; Nell, who had seen the postman, demanding to know what he had pushed through the letter box; a fatless day, since Meg had used up her butter, lard and margarine, and would have to do without until rations were due again tomorrow. A boring day until a little after the nine o’clock news. Meg had carried out kitchen chairs, and she and Nell sat there, faces to the last of the evening sun, talking about the days when grocers’ shelves were piled high with food few could afford, and wasn’t it amazing that the minute unemployment dropped and people had money in their pockets for a change, They had rationed food!

‘Ssssh!’ All at once Meg tilted her head. ‘Listen …’

They heard no sound, yet there was no mistaking what was to be, because each had sensed the strange quiet that hung on the air before an alert sounded. People had come to recognize that silence: a stillness so complete they could sense it, taste it almost. It was like nothing else Meg knew; a void so all-embracing that it was as if the entire city waited with her, breath indrawn, for the stomach-turning wail.

The first siren sounded distantly and she whispered, ‘It is! It’s a raid, Nell!’

Her mouth had gone dry, fear iced through her. She ran into the kitchen, gathering up her handbag and Ma’s attaché case, throwing a coat over her shoulders, grabbing the woolly scarf that hung on the doorpeg. Then she turned the key in the lock and ran to the door of number 3, opening it without preamble.

‘Tommy! Be sharp about it!’

‘You two go on ahead!’ He hobbled across the room, lame leg swinging jerkily, gas mask over his arm.

‘We’re goin’ together!’ Nell slammed shut her front door. ‘There’s nuthin’ happenin’ yet. No hurry.’ It was a matter of principle that unless bombs were actually dropping, she walked to the shelter. Not for a big clock would she give bluddy Hitler the satisfaction of knowing how afraid she was; that every time the siren went she had an overwhelming need to pee. ‘Just poppin’ to the lavvy! Won’t be a tick!’

‘By the heck,’ said Tommy, as they hurried up Lyra Street towards St Joseph’s church, ‘that lot know when to come!’ He glared vindictively at a near-full moon rising low in the sky.

Father O’Flaherty stood at the church door, gathering in his flock. The crypt was deep and solid, and safe against anything save a direct hit. There were worse places to be when bombs were dropping than the crypt of St Joseph’s.

‘Evenin’, Father,’ Nell smiled. ‘God luv yer.’

‘Down ye go!’ None who lived in Tippet’s Yard were of the faith of Rome, yet they were always made welcome by the elderly priest.

‘Father.’ Tommy nodded, tipping his cap; Meg smiled her relief and thanks.

Already the crypt smelled of damp and body sweat, but it made no matter. They were safer than most, Meg thought thankfully, making for a corner seat, spreading her belongings either side of her, reserving places for Nell and Tommy.

A woman with three small children and a baby in her arms was helped down the twisting stone steps by an elderly nun; children, wakened from sleep, began to fret, only to be told to shurrup their whingeing, or big fat Goering would come and get them!

‘As quiet as the grave up there!’

The blackout curtain covering the door swished aside and Father O’Flaherty beamed reassuringly at all present, who smiled back, even though they knew it was only a matter of time before the bombs fell. Perhaps though, Tommy thought, it was all part of a war of nerves. Perhaps those bombers had flown in low up the river, just to make sure the sirens would send most of Liverpool to the shelters. After which, perversely, they turned south-east to drop their bombs on Manchester, instead. Them Krauts didn’t change.

‘Looks like they’re not coming.’ Nell’s whisper sounded loud in the strained, listening silence.

The flock turned, seeking out the optimist, warning her, unspeaking, not to tempt Fate.

The eyes of the pretty young nun found those of the priest, and she raised her eyebrows questioningly. Father O’Flaherty nodded, and she bent down to turn up the flame beneath the tea urn.

‘Soon be ready,’ she smiled, dropping a small calico bag in which tea had been carefully tied into the steaming water. ‘Dear sweet Lord, what was that?’

Accusing eyes turned once more to the tempter of Fate, then opened wide with fear as the company listened for the second bomb to fall, and the third, because bombs usually fell three at a time.

Indrawn breaths were let go noisily. The explosions were far enough away. Seemed like the docks were getting it, poor sods; the north-end docks, that was, and maybe too on the other side of the river, Birkenhead way. As long as they didn’t come any nearer it would be all right.

Feet shuffled; bottoms wriggled; the flock settled down to await the tea that would soon be passed round in thick, earthenware mugs. Mothers shifted sleeping babies to a more comfortable position; small, grubby thumbs slid into small, pink mouths; old men folded their arms and closed their eyes. Almost certainly the docks were the target, and the city centre. Again.

The all clear came with the dawn. It sounded high and steady; a promise that the skies above Liverpool were clear, the danger over. Now people could shuffle stiffly into the real world, get on with their lives as best they could; men wondering if there would be a tram to take them to a place of work which might not now be there, women to resume the task of looking after children, searching shops for off-the-ration food – if the bombers had left any shops standing, that was.

‘No damage up top that I can see!’ The priest’s booming voice filled the crypt. ‘They gave us a miss last night! Away to your homes now, and I’ll want volunteers for a bit of cleaning up down here after eight o’clock Mass!’

Heads lifted, shoulders straightened. No damage done to the streets around St Joseph’s. They still had homes to go to! Sad about the docks, mind, but a sup of tea was the first thing that came to mind, then washing away the stink of the crypt.

There was a brightening in the sky behind the crowd of warehouses at the distant dockside. A faint breeze blew in from the river, bringing with it the smells of destruction: the acrid stink of blazing timber doused with water, the stench of sewage, mingling with whiffs of escaping coal gas. All around them, the dust of bomb rubble was beginning to settle, reminding them that the danger had not been so very far away, and that next time …

‘You’ll be gettin’ a bit of a wash, then, and going to work?’ Nell said, matter-of-factly.

‘Suppose so …’ Meg’s eyes seemed full of grit and she smelled of sweat, but a night spent in the shelter was no excuse for being late for work.

‘I’ll be getting me head down for a couple of hours,’ Tommy said, calculating that the bombers would just about now be landing on aerodromes in Holland or France. ‘I hate Jairmans,’ he grumbled, still not able to forgive them for the last war, let alone for starting another. ‘One of these days, they’ll get what’s coming to them, and I hope I’ll still be alive to see it! Ta-ra well, each.’

‘I’ll make a brew.’ Nell unlocked her door. ‘Come to mine when you’re ready, queen.’ She had bread and jam; best see that Dolly’s girl had something inside her before she went to work, because God only knew how long it might take her to get there. It needed only one unexploded bomb or a few yards of mangled tram track to bring the city centre to a standstill. But ill winds, and all that. There’d be shovelling and clearing up to do; put a few quid into the pockets of the poor sods still on the dole, like as not. Funny that it should take a war to bring work. Liverpool folk had benefited from the war, even the prostitutes on Lime Street. Yet given a choice, they’d all have voted for poverty and peace. ‘And you’d better leave your ma’s case with me, in case bluddy Hitler sends them bombers back whilst you’re out!’

‘I’ll do that, Nell. And it’ll be early to bed for me tonight!’

She closed the door, slid home the bolt, then, drawing the kitchen curtains, turned on the tap above the sink to make sure there was water still in it. Then she took off her clothes and began to wash the stink from her body.

The cold water did little to revive her and she thought achingly of her bed in the slant-roofed bedroom. Tonight she would sleep and sleep.

Sleep was not to be. As the May-blue sky began to shade to apricot, the air-raid sirens wailed again.

‘Oh, no!’ Meg gasped. ‘Not two nights on the trot!’ She flung wide the door to find Tommy on the doorstep.

‘Come on, girl! They’re back!’

‘Where’s Nell?’

‘Said she was off out to see if she could find a few ciggies and a drop of the hard stuff. Reckon she’ll be at the pub …’

‘She’ll have heard the sirens, won’t she? She’ll make her way to the crypt?’

‘Happen. Mind, the pub has good cellars – she’ll find somewhere. And we’d best be off. You got everything, then?’

‘Think so.’ Ma’s case, a coat and scarf, her handbag and gas mask. ‘God, Tommy, but I’m tired.’

‘Aye.’ At least he and Nell had managed a few hours’ sleep. ‘Not like them to come two nights runnin’. They’ve never done it before. Maybe this one’s a false alarm.’

False alarms sometimes happened. Once it had been a V-formation of geese flying up the Mersey; another time it was fighters which turned out to be ours. Tonight might be another cockup, Tommy decided, and before the little nun had time to light the gas under the tea urn, the all clear would go and they’d shove off to their beds.

As Meg and Tommy walked carefully down the worn, twisting steps, they saw Nell sitting in the corner, waving, and beside her Kip’s sister, Amy.

‘Was just outside the church when the sirens went,’ Nell beamed. ‘Sit yourselves down.’

Her breath smelled of gin and there would be cigarettes in her pinafore pocket, Meg was sure.

‘I take it the pub came up with five,’ she smiled, relieved to see her neighbour.

‘No. Not the pub.’ Nell dipped into her pocket and brought out a packet – a twenty packet, would you believe – of Senior Service such as no civilian had seen these twelve months past. ‘I ran into a gentleman friend, just docked from the USA.’

‘Ah.’ Tommy nodded.

‘A friend,’ Meg said, then closed her eyes and leaned her shoulders against the rough stone of the wall, willing the all clear to sound by the time she had counted to a hundred and one.

Seconds later, bombs began to fall, and nearer to St Joseph’s tonight. Those who sheltered there felt the awful crunch as the first landed – slamming into the earth just a second before the explosion roared and raged directly above them – sensed the shock waves through the thick, rough stones of the crypt, as the bombs went to earth.

‘Jaysus, but that one was near!’ Father O’Flaherty gasped as years of gathered dust and flakes of plaster fell from the vaulted roof. Eyes widened in silent terror, fingertips fondled rosary beads; children, too afraid to cry, whimpered softly. ‘Ah, well, a miss is as good as a mile,’ the old priest roared defiantly. ‘And will you move yourself, sister, and light that tea urn? Aren’t we all just about choked with bliddy dust?’

Nell wrapped an arm around the shoulders of the girl who sat beside her, crossing her legs tightly, wondering if there was a lavvy in the crypt.

‘Bluddy Hitler,’ she muttered, wanting desperately to light a cigarette, knowing that if she took out the packet and broke the Cellophane wrapping, she would be expected to offer it round. ‘Want to get a bit of shuteye, girl? Ar, well, I suppose not,’ she shrugged when Meg shook her head, because who could sleep with all that lot going on above? ‘Bluddy Hitler,’ she said again.

Yet when the all clear sounded, those who had spent five fear-filled hours longing for it were all at once reluctant to climb the crypt steps; shrank from reality, because last night’s raid had been too near to home.

Meg rose to her feet, rotating her head painfully. There was a crick in her neck and every bone in her body ached.

‘What do you suppose it’ll be like?’ She offered her arm to Nell, needing her comforting closeness. ‘What if –’

‘If Tippet’s Yard has copped one, d’you mean?’

Meg nodded mutely. Through the open doors ahead she could see a square of pink and grey morning sky, though what she would find when they stepped into the world beyond, she did not know.

‘Well! Will you look at that!’ Clutching the gatepost for support because her legs had all at once gone peculiar, Nell gazed down Lyra Street.

‘Oh my God!’ Kip’s sister, her husband away at sea, lived in Lyra Street.

‘Looks like Amy’s is all right,’ Meg whispered, eyes scanning the rubble-piled street. Three houses had been bombed; one stood broken and jagged, with wallpaper flapping in the breeze and what was left of a chimney stack looking as if were ready to fall if someone sneezed. Of the other two houses, nothing remained. It was as if, Meg thought, some giant hand had scooped them out so cleanly and thoroughly that they might never have stood there. She turned to see Kip’s sister standing beside her, a baby over her shoulder, a small girl at her side.

‘It’s all right, Amy. They didn’t get yours …’

‘No, thank God,’ she breathed, her face crumpling into tears of relief. ‘What about Tippet’s?’

‘Dunno. Haven’t had a look yet, though it seems all right.’ Ahead, Meg could see slate roofs, gleaming black in the morning light. ‘I’ll push off, if you’re sure you’re OK?’

‘I’m fine …’

Tippet’s Yard was undamaged; not so much as a broken window pane to be seen.

‘Thanks be for small mercies,’ Nell muttered, her eyes ranging the roofs for missing slates, glad that the small, soot-caked huddle of buildings seemed not to have been worth a German bomb. It wasn’t much of a house, but it was hers and she called it home. She had even, she admitted, been glad when Liverpool Corporation had declared it a slum and placed a demolition order on it. Yet the Corpie was entitled to knock it down if the mood took them, Nell thought mutinously; the German Air Force was not! ‘You’ll not be goin’ in to work, Meg? You look like you’re asleep on your feet!’

‘Not this morning.’ She’d had to walk the best part of two miles yesterday to get to the store, only to find half the staff missing. ‘I’ll get a few hours’ sleep; maybe I’ll go in this afternoon.’ When she could think straight, that was; when she had washed away the smell of the crypt and had a couple of hours in bed.

Nell unlocked her door, calling down hell and the pox on Hitler, muttering that at least the Kaiser had been a gentleman and not a pesky corporal! ‘And if that lot come again tonight, I’m stoppin’ here!’

She couldn’t take another night of hard benches and air that almost choked you to breathe it. And she couldn’t stand one more night of whingeing kids, poor little sods, and the stink of pee and unchanged nappies. Tonight, Nell Shaw would sleep in her own bed, and Hitler could go to hell!

Tommy and Meg – and Nell, too – spent five more nights in the shelter of St Joseph’s church. Five nights more the sirens wailed. Liverpool was cut off from the rest of the country, railway stations out of action – no trains out, or in. Buses were thin on the ground; tram tracks lay in grotesquely twisted shapes, fires still burned on the docks either side of the river.

Poor old Liverpool, Nell sighed. How much more could it take? As much as bluddy Hitler could dish out, she decided, and then some, though what Meg would do now that Edmund and Sons had been flattened was another worry on her mind.

The girl had been lucky, for all that; had been given her pay packet only the day before, and the commission she had earned during the previous month. Meg wasn’t penniless, exactly; not for a couple of weeks.

‘What’ll you do – about a job, I mean?’ Nell asked a week and a day after that first raid. ‘I suppose you could sign on the dole …’ If the dole office was still standing, that was.

‘Suppose I could, though I don’t much care. All I know is that I’ve had just as much of this as I can take! Seven nights of it!’

‘Haven’t we all, queen? But there’s nuthin’ we can do about it! And you an’ me an’ Tommy are still alive and a roof over our heads!’

‘For how much longer?’ It was against the odds, Meg thought despairingly, for Tippet’s Yard to survive many more nights of bombing. Sooner or later it would be hit, and then they would join the homeless in makeshift rest centres and live from night to night, wondering when it would all end.

It was very soon to end, though those who waited wearily that Friday night with bags packed ready for the shelters did not know it. The moon was waning, Tommy had said cautiously, gazing into the sky. Soon the German bombers would be without the benefit of a city laid beneath them as clear as day, almost.

Not that they’d had it all their own way. Anti-aircraft guns blazed shells into the night sky and naval ships in the Mersey had elevated their guns and joined in the barrage too. Many Luftwaffe planes had crashed or been blown up in mid-air; it hadn’t been as easy as Fat Hermann thought.

‘They’re late.’ It was past the time they usually came; what trickery did they have in mind tonight, then?

‘Whisht what you say,’ Nell snapped. Like most of the people of Liverpool, she was tired and afraid, and wished she had relations in the country she could go to – if there had been a bus to take her there, that was. ‘Don’t do to go tempting fate, girl.’

At eleven that night, the sirens had still not sounded; at midnight Nell said cautiously that she was going to have one last ciggy, then be damned if she wasn’t going to bed.

‘Looks like you were right, Meg Blundell. Maybe they aren’t coming,’ Tommy ventured. Happen tonight some other city was to get Liverpool’s bombs. London perhaps, or Birmingham or Clydeside. ‘Think I’ll chance my luck and go to bed, an’ all!’

They weren’t coming, said the people of Liverpool in disbelief. To those who waited it seemed there was to be a reprieve. Watchers on rooftops searched an empty sky; fire crews and ambulance crews remained uncalled. In rest centres volunteers counted off another hour and said that maybe, perhaps for just one night, Liverpool was to be allowed to lick its wounds – and sleep.

This was the time, Meg thought, dizzy from so many hours of sleep, to take stock of her life. Of course, the bombers might return tonight and she would be back to square one again; but if they didn’t come, then top of the list was finding a job. Rumour had it that the city centre was in a mess, with roads blocked and ARP men still digging in the rubble for bodies, dead or alive. So maybe – if the Labour Exchange was still standing, that was – she could offer to help the rescuers. She was young and strong and could learn to handle a shovel. Or maybe they could do with help at the rest centres or at one of the hospitals. Just as long as the job paid money she wasn’t particular, and besides, she thought, it would be her way of giving a two-fingers-up to Hitler’s lot.

But first she would make her way to the city centre and see for herself exactly what the Luftwaffe had done. She’d heard that the city gaol had had a direct hit and twenty prisoners killed in locked cells, and that a match factory had been hit and blazed so brilliantly that it attracted still more bombers to flatten still more streets.

Rumour had it too that no cars were allowed in the city centre; that unidentified dead were laid in rows in makeshift mortuaries and that no one knew what was to be done with them. And where, she wanted to know, did you put the people from the seven thousand homes that had been bombed to the ground?

If she were honest, mind, she’d had no great love for Liverpool; Liverpool had been where she and Ma lived until they could go to the little house in the country. Yet now when it had suffered a terrible blitzkrieg, she pitied it with all her heart; felt in tune with the roistering, bawdy city because she had been a part of its terror. And Liverpool was, if you looked facts straight in the face, the only home she had ever known, dump though it was. In Liverpool lived people like Nell and Tommy, and others ever ready to offer a smile to strangers, or a shoulder to cry on.

What she could not believe was that there had been rioting in the streets and the military called in to put a stop to it. Nor could she believe that looting was rife and the homes of those who fled the bombing had been broken in to by angry mobs.

Yet she was to find when she reached the heart of the city that things were even worse than she had imagined. True, there were soldiers in the streets, but digging in the rubble and setting up a field telephone system, because so many telephone exchanges had been bombed. Of rioters and looters she saw none; only acres of emptiness that once had been streets, with here and there a shop still standing with ‘BUSINESS AS USUAL’, defiantly daubed on its boarded-up windows.

She lifted her head and smiled with pride that she was a part of it; had endured seven nights of bombing and come out of it with her life. She was ready now to get on with that life and do whatever she could to help. Ready, that was, until she turned a corner to where ARP workers and soldiers were digging, and wished she had heeded the cry of the man who told her to go back; to stay away.

But it was too late, and she stood stock-still to gaze at bodies laid almost reverently side by side, some with staring eyes and open mouths as though they had died of suffocation; others with blood-caked, mangled limbs. And all of them covered in the dust of destruction. It matted their hair, their eyes, their clothes.

Yet even as the kindly soldier led her away, she looked back in disbelief, not just at wanton, stinking death, but at the small body of a baby that could almost have been asleep on the pavement were it not for the dust of death that covered it.

‘Away to your home, lassie,’ said the soldier. ‘Away and make yourself a cup of tea.’

‘A baby!’ she gasped as she flung open Nell’s door. ‘A little thing with no one to own it! Just laid there, all mucky on the pavement, as if it meant nothing to nobody!’

The tears came then as the motherly arms folded her close and hushed her and scolded her for going out looking for trouble.

‘I told you, Meg Blundell; said there’d be nothing gained by goin’ into town, but you would go, see it with your own eyes, you said! Not a pretty sight, by all accounts.’

‘It wasn’t, Nell. It wasn’t Liverpool any more. Just streets and streets flattened, and people with lost looks on their faces. And would you believe it – in the middle of all that mess there was that statue with not a mark on it! All that – that shambles, yet Queen Victoria looking down on it all with a right gob on her, as if it wasn’t her Albert’s bluddy lot that done it! The world’s gone mad!’

Her sobs were wild, as if all the bottled-up grief of the past months had burst out and was not to be silenced. Her body shook with anger and loathing for what she had seen. She wanted to run, but had no place to run to; only Tippet’s Yard to come home to. She fished for a handkerchief, dabbing her eyes, blowing her nose noisily. Then she took a deep breath and held it until her head pounded.

‘You finished then?’ Nell said sternly.

‘Yes. An’ I’m sorry if I upset you. I know I’m better off than a lot and I should be saving my tears for that little baby. But I’ll tell you something for nothing, if you’re in the mood to listen. I’m gettin’ out of this place! I’ve had enough. I’m off, Nell!’

‘Oh, ar. And where to, then? Your auntie’s place in the Lake District will it be, or yer posh cousin’s ’ouse in Llandudno?’ Nell asked with a sarcasm she didn’t really mean. ‘Oh, grow up, girl. Tippet’s Yard isn’t exactly the Adelphi, but it wasn’t bombed like Lyra Street. At least we’re sleepin’ in our own beds, and not on the floor of some drill hall. And where is there for the likes of us to go, will you tell me? And who’d pay our fares, even supposin’ the trains and buses was normal?’

‘She’s right,’ said Tommy, who had heard the commotion and come to see what was to do. ‘We sit tight and count our blessings and stick together. And hope them bombers don’t come back again for another seven nights!’

‘Sorry Tommy, Nell. It was just that I couldn’t believe what I saw. And the baby … It was so little, and lonely. What right have they to kill babies?’

‘We send bombers out too,’ Nell said mildly, nodding to Tommy to fill the kettle. ‘Wars are no respecters of innocence.’

‘I’m a selfish little cat, aren’t I?’ Contritely Meg shaped her lips into a smile. ‘And Ma would be glad to be alive, wouldn’t she – bombs and all?’

‘I’m not so sure about that.’ Tommy lit the gas with a plop. ‘Your mother had a hard life. She’s better off where she is, in heaven.’

‘Ma never talked about heaven, nor God. Don’t think she believed in all that, Tommy.’

‘Oh, my word, but she did! Not your religious ’eaven, mind, but if poor Doll’s soul is anywhere it’s at that Candlefold of hers. Her face’d light up when she talked about it,’ Nell said softly. ‘So don’t go wishing her alive, girl. She was a sick woman and she’s happy now. Heaven is where you make it, don’t forget! Now, who’s for a sup of tea, then?’

The May evening was warm, and what they could see of the sky a bright blue, still. They sat on wooden chairs in the little cobbled yard, wondering at the silence; trying not to think of those seven nights past, nor allow themselves to wonder if the blitz would happen again.

‘It’s true, then. He really did come,’ Nell murmured. ‘Was on the nine o’clock news.’ If it was on the wireless, you had to believe it.

‘Hess, you mean? Fishy, if you ask me. Will they shoot him, d’you think?’

‘Hope so.’ Nell gazed longingly at a cigarette, then placed it tenderly back in her pocket. ‘Suppose they’ll lock him in the Tower, though.’

‘I’d lock him in a house in the East End of London,’ Meg offered with narrowed eyes. ‘Then when his lot bomb London, he’ll get a bit of his own back. He must be mad, though, coming here. Maybe Hitler’s sent him to offer peace terms.’

‘Well, we don’t want peace with that lot. And won’t bluddy Hitler be annoyed when he finds out that his deputy was taken prisoner by a ploughman with a pitchfork?’ Nell laughed heartily. ‘Ah, well, it takes all sorts …’

The capture of Rudolf Hess was of no interest to Nell Shaw. Of more importance was where she would find her next five cigarettes and if the butcher – whose shop had survived the bombing – would have off-the-ration sausages for sale tomorrow.

‘I did hear,’ said Tommy, ‘that there’s an office been opened in Scotty Road – a sort of help place for bombed-outs. Seems a lot of folk have lost their identity cards and their ration books – just blown to smithereens. Got nuthin’ but what they stand up in. Mind, I’d have thought they’d have taken things like that with them to the shelter.’

‘Folk only think of finding somewhere safe when that siren goes,’ Nell defended.

‘Mm …’ Meg was thinking about the baby still, and about the cardboard coffins they were putting the dead in – those no one had claimed, that was – and burying them in mass graves. At least Ma had had a decent funeral. It made Meg wonder, since she was almost sure her mother had never been a one for religion, what she would have made of it all, and the vicar who didn’t even know her saying kind things at the graveside. And was heaven where you made it, and hell too? There was a lot of sense in what Nell said, because Meg already knew that hell was a blitzed city and a baby lying on the pavement. This morning, she had looked hell in the face.

‘A penny for them!’ A hand broke Meg’s line of vision. ‘You were miles away, girl. Thinking about Doll, were you?’

‘Yes. And about the baby …’

‘Now see here, Meg Blundell! Isn’t no use gettin’ maudlin’. What’s done is done. Nuthin’ any of us can do about it. And maybe you’d better try to find that place in Scotty Road – ask them where you can sign on, for a start, and if they’ve got any jobs. Did you pay your stamps? They’ll have to give you dole if you did! First thing tomorrow you’ll have to snap out of it and get on with your life, ’cause if you don’t, bluddy Hitler’ll have won, won’t he? Can’t you see that that’s what he wants to do; knock the stuffing out of us so that when he invades we’ll throw up our hands without a fight?’

‘Do you think he’ll come, then?’ Since Nazi Germany had occupied France, it seemed only a matter of time before an invasion fleet set out for England.

‘Nah! He’ll have to get here first! Don’t forget we’ve got the sea all around us, girl, and a navy to protect us. Oh, it was easy for them stormtroopers to walk through Belgium and sneak round the end of the Maginot Line into France, but even Hitler can’t walk on water, don’t forget!’

‘But do you think that if it happened, we’d make a fight of it, like Churchill says? Would we fight on the beaches and in the streets?’

‘I think you should worry about that,’ Tommy said firmly, ‘if it happens. As far as I’m concerned, them Jairmans are taking their time making their minds up. Nearly a year since Dunkirk, don’t forget.’

‘So where’ll he go next?’ Meg persisted. ‘Hitler’s been very quiet lately, you’ve got to admit it. Hasn’t invaded anywhere …’

‘I wouldn’t say quiet exactly,’ Nell sniffed, thinking of the nights of bombing, ‘but I’m inclined to agree with you, girl. Hasn’t taken over anywhere this last year. Mind, there’s precious few countries left for him to grab.’

‘Except ours …’

‘And Sweden and Spain and Switzerland,’ Tommy offered. ‘Mind, them three’s neutral. Maybe it suits him to leave them alone – for diplomatic purposes, like. So that only leaves America and Russia.’

‘America’s too far away,’ Meg reasoned, ‘and Russia’s got a pact with Germany.’

‘Hitler don’t trust Stalin, for all that.’ Nell gave into temptation and placed the cigarette between her lips. ‘But forget about ’im. I’m goin’ to put the kettle on – make us a cup of cocoa. You got any dried milk, Meg?’

Nell Shaw had had enough of war talk, and she was tired. She would, therefore, have a cup of cocoa, her last cigarette, then take herself off to bed. Tomorrow, was another day. Time enough to worry about it when it came.

Meg snuggled into her mattress, pulled the sheet up to her chin, then stared unblinking at the ceiling. She had still not made up the sleep lost during the bombing but she could not forget the baby, wondering where it was now, and if someone had claimed it. But maybe its mother was dead too.

A tear trickled out of the corner of her eye and ran into her ear; a tear for a dead baby, not for herself, because Meg Blundell was alive, and that, in this city, was something to be thankful for. And tomorrow she really would start looking for a job because nobody could live on fresh air, and the money in her purse wasn’t going to last for ever. There was the money in Ma’s bankbook, of course, if things got really bad. It shouldn’t be too difficult to go to the post office, copy the simple, rounded writing of her mother’s signature.

‘Tsk!’ She groped for the matchbox and lit the candle at her bedside, looking at her watch with dismay. Half-past one in the morning and wide awake still!

‘Ma?’ she whispered.

But she heard no answer, nor felt one in her heart. Ma was back at Candlefold where she’d been happy, and was bonny again, with pale blonde curls and a wide smile, and standing in the sunshine beside the pump trough in the stableyard, waiting for Norah Bentley and Gladys Tucker. Or was she bobbing a curtsey as Nanny Boag sailed past with baby and perambulator? That little boy would be going on twenty-four now, and called up into the armed forces; married, perhaps, with a baby of his own.

She wished she could forget babies. Had that German pilot stopped to think, just for one second, what his bombs would do, or had he been as afraid, perhaps, as the people in the city he dropped them on? She hoped fervently he would never know peace of mind again, but she was as sure as she could be that he would sleep soundly when he got back to his aerodrome, thankful he was still alive. And anyway, wars were about killing, weren’t they? Our lot did it too.

The rattling of the letter box awoke her and she stretched and breathed in the acrid smell of a burned-out candle.

Dammit! Nine in the morning and Nell on the doorstep! Meg pulled back the curtains and opened the window to see the postman, holding a parcel.

‘Miss M. M. Blundell, is it?’ he called, squinting up.

‘That’s me! Hang on a minute!’

‘Fewd parcel,’ said the postman laconically. ‘All right for some, innit?’

But Meg only smiled and thought warm thoughts about Kip, who loved her, then read the green label in Kip’s handwriting, declaring the contents to be unsolicited food.

‘Well, then, and who’s the lucky one?’ Nell beamed from the doorway. ‘That young man of yours looks after you all right. Goin’ to see what’s inside, then?’

‘You open it, Nell. I’ll put the kettle on and do a slice of toast. Lovely day, isn’t it?’

‘Glorious. If you didn’t step outside this yard you’d never know there’d been any bombing. Pity the roads are in a mess still. We could’ve gone to Sevvy Park.’

Sefton Park was as near to being the countryside as Nell could want: trees and flowers and wide expanses of grass for sitting on. She’d had many a canoodle there in her courting days.

‘We’ll go there, Nell, just as soon as the trams get back to normal. We’ll take some sarnies and sit in the sun.’ The park was on the posh side of Liverpool, on the outskirts; the bombs wouldn’t have reached that far out. ‘But I’m going to see about finding a job or getting some dole to tide me over. And I’m going to try to get Ma’s money. I – I thought I could sign her name – it wouldn’t be dishonest, would it? When Ma died I didn’t give back her identity card. I could show them that …’

‘Then you shouldn’t have a lot of bother getting it. And it wouldn’t be as if it was hundreds of pounds you’d be askin’ for.’

‘No.’ That five pounds had been a fortune to Ma, though, and saved shilling by shilling. ‘But what has Kip sent?’ Her eyes ranged the array on the tabletop. ‘Ciggies? Think he must have meant them for you, Nell. And you’d better take the mints to Tommy; tell him he’s invited to Sunday tea.’

‘You’re a good girl, Meg Blundell. Give me your ration book. I’ll take it with Tommy’s and try to get half a dozen sausages out of the butcher.’

‘Ask him if he’s got a piece of off-the-ration suet, will you? Then we can have meat pie,’ Meg smiled, holding up a tin of steak.

She felt near contentment as she ate her breakfast. Mind, Nell wouldn’t approve of what she planned to do, but she had thought things over during the wakeful night. A job in a shop, perhaps; go the whole hog and sign up for the Army? There had been ATS girls at the Rialto dance, looking great in their uniforms. Bed and board and all provided, and leave four times a year – when there would be Tippet’s Yard to come back to, and Tommy and Nell.

All very well, but she had decided on neither, because until the Government told her to register for war work she was footloose, could go where she wanted and already she knew where that place was. Approximately, of course. You went to Ormskirk, took the train to Preston, then somewhere between there and a place called Whalley was a dot on the map so small she’d had difficulty finding it. And likely she would have difficulty getting there, an’ all, but she was as sure as she could be it was to Nether Barton she must go; find the house where Ma was now. It wasn’t until she did that she would know what to do with her life.

Candlefold had rarely been out of her thoughts since the night she discovered she had been born there, and now her roots were calling her back – just to take a look at the place and maybe hear Ma’s voice with her heart, telling her she wasn’t to fret and to straighten her back and hold her head high and get on with her life. The only bother, she knew, would be telling Nell, because Nell Shaw was going to take a lot of convincing!

Yet go there she must, because she knew in her heart that Candlefold – or Ma, was it? – had something to tell her.

She sighed, arranged the tins and packets in a straight line on the tabletop, deciding that for Sunday tea they would have steak pie – suet permitting, that was – and tinned fruit salad and tinned cream. And on Sunday, when they had eaten and were less likely to argue, she would tell Nell and Tommy what she intended to do.

Relieved that for the time being at least she had got her life sorted, she picked up Kip’s letter.

Darling Meg,

I wish you were here with me. It isn’t as hot as before but I have spent time on the beach in the sun. This is like a different world. Some things are in short supply, but there is fruit and plenty of tomatoes in the shops – no standing in a queue for two apples – and at the weekend whole families were on the beach with picnics. The girls here are beautiful and brown from the sun, but I haven’t seen one as lovely as you, Meg.

By the time you get this – if it doesn’t go to the bottom – I should be under way again and counting off the days till I see you.

Take care,

Love from Kip

She glanced at the date at the top of the letter, realizing it had been written long before the bombing. Would Kip know about it now, and be worrying about her and Amy? Dear, kind Kip, who thought she was lovely.

She rose to gaze into the mirror. Not lovely at all, Kip Lewis; perhaps pretty in parts – blue eyes that didn’t go with black hair; a good complexion, though pale. And she was slim, she supposed, but so were most people these days, thanks to rationing. And Nell had said she had good legs and should shorten her skirts a bit – but lovely? Not really.

She took the sixpenny airmail letter from the mantel, and pen and ink from the drawer.

Dear, kind Kip,

The parcel arrived safely this morning and you are very popular with the people in Tippet’s Yard, who will be having a luxurious tea on Sunday at number 1.

I saw Amy and the children yesterday, and they are all very well.

She stopped, frowning. Best not mention the bombing; just that they were all right and, anyway, if she did, the Censor’s Office would slice it out and the folded letter card would arrive looking like a paper doily!

Today is lovely and warm and the light nights a blessing. Nell has suggested a picnic in Sefton Park. (She says many thanks for the ciggies, by the way.)

She stopped again, reading what she had written. Not much of a letter to send to a man all those miles from home and planning to buy an engagement ring in Sydney.

I think of you often, Kip, and look forward to seeing you again, and wish you a safe journey home.

Take care, Kip.

All my love,

Meg

All my love. That sounded better than the rest of the letter, and a nice bit to end up with. She wished she could love Kip and want him that way. He was a good, kind man, and anyone with half a brain would jump at the chance to be his girl and wear his ring. And to marry him, and have an allowance every month from the shipping line he sailed for.

But that would not be enough, and she wasn’t able to love Kip as he deserved; not yet, anyway. And she had to love him – or any man she married – with all her heart and soul, and want him that way.

Once, twenty years ago, Ma had wanted a man that way; hadn’t thought of the consequences, only about being in love. And the fact that his name did not appear on her birth certificate was neither here nor there, Meg brooded, because Ma would have been deeply in love that way the night her daughter was conceived.

It was a point in her favour, Meg frowned, that she was really a love child, which sounded better than illegitimate and much, much better than bastard. Who was he, Ma? Why did he leave you? Did he know about me? Would he have married you, if he had?

Meg had already worked out when she’d been conceived. Babies born at the end of August were got round about Christmastime, she’d decided. Or had it been New Year? Had there been holly and ivy and a Christmas tree and dancing and fun? Was her conceiving a happy one?

In which room at Candlefold had she been born, and had Nanny Boag delivered her? And why hadn’t she been called Carol or Holly or Noelle? Why two saints’ names?

Oh, there were so many questions, so much still to discover. And all the answers were at a house called Candlefold Hall, if only she knew how to get there. And whilst she was daydreaming about bonny housemaids and sunny summer days, did the Kenworthy family still live there, or had it been taken by the Government as an Army billet, or a hospital or convalescent home for wounded soldiers.

Candlefold 1916. Garden Party for wounded soldiers, and Ma in a long cotton frock and a pretty straw hat.

Oh, Candlefold, why are you bothering me like this? Or is it you, Ma? Is there something you want me to know, like who my father is? Do you want to tell me you are happy again, and waiting at the pump trough in the cobbled courtyard? And if I stand there, will I hear your voice with my heart, and be glad?

And had you thought, girl, demanded her common sense in Margaret Mary Blundell’s most scathing voice, that the flamin’ pump trough might not be there; that the house, even, might have gone, an’ all?

But if she found the house unchanged, did she march up to the front door and say, ‘Excuse me, missis, but can I sit on yer pump trough for a couple of minutes; have a word with Ma?’

She clucked with annoyance, because what she intended to do was so ridiculous and stupid that Nell would give her the length of her tongue and tell her to grow up and get herself down to the dole office like most folk else with one iota of sense in their heads would do!

Yet it didn’t matter what Nell would say, nor Tommy, because Ma did have something to tell her and Candlefold hadn’t fallen down, nor the Kenworthys left it, or why did she feel so strongly about going there? Why had an old house called to her, all sunlit and shining, and why, ever since she’d opened Ma’s little attaché case, had she felt so curious and excited?

Was she bomb happy? Had the seven fearful nights got to her, and the desolation that had once been a city, and the baby on the pavement? Or was it simpler than that: did she want to get out of this place and had she latched on to Ma’s dreams and made them her excuse?

Only one thing was certain. She would never know until she found a house called Candleford. And Ma.

Three

Getting to Preston had been easier than Meg had ever dared hope. Liverpool city centre was still choked with the debris of shops and offices and warehouses, but once she had skirted streets closed by ‘DANGER. UNEXPLODED BOMB’ signs and taken heed of ‘NO NAKED LIGHTS’ warnings, and tried not to look at piles of rubble under which might still be bodies, she had seen a red bus going to Ormskirk, and any time now, the conductor told her.

‘So get yerself on sharpish. There’s a war on, or had you forgot?’

As if she were likely to! Meg selected a seat, settling herself, arms folded, to think about what was to come, and what had been.

‘You’re goin’ where?’ Last night, Nell had drawn sharply on her cigarette, then blown smoke out fiercely through her nose. ‘You’re goin’ to a place you don’t know exists, on the off chance? What if it’s been bombed, then, or them Kenworthys have upped and offed? Goin’ to look a right wet nelly, aren’t you, and wasted time and money into the bargain? What do you expect to find there? Who do you expect is goin’ to be there?’

‘Ma.’ Meg had whispered so quietly that Nell had stopped for breath and appealed to Tommy to tell the girl she was round the bend and God only knew where she would end up if she went on with such foolishness.

‘But what harm can it do? She knows right from wrong,’ Tommy had reasoned, ‘and not to take lifts from men. Can you blame her for wantin’ out of this hole, even if it’s only for a day? Wasn’t you young once, Nell Shaw? Didn’t you do daft things, an’ all?’

‘I was, and yes, I did daft things and lived to regret some of them. But I promised Dolly I’d look out for Meg and that’s what I’m tryin’ to do! She’s getting as bad as her Ma! That Candlefold was like some magic place Doll dreamed up!’

‘You can’t photograph dreams, Nell. That house is real and it’s there still, an’ I’m goin’ to find it! If I leave early in the morning I can be there by noon – with luck, that is.’

‘So what’ll you do for food?’ Nell was wavering.

‘I’ll take cheese sarnies, and a bottle of water.’

‘You’re determined, aren’t you? If only you’d tell me why.’

‘I don’t know why. I only know there’ll be no peace for me till I find the place. You said Ma thought it was heaven on earth, and you said that heaven was where you made it! Well, if I’m to find Ma, she’ll be at Candlefold. I’ve got to know she’s all right before I decide what I’m goin’ to do.’

‘Oh, Meg Blundell, why can’t you let Doll rest in peace? She was sick and fed up with life, went the way she wanted to. Why can’t you accept it and act your age? And if you want to know what you’re goin’ to do with your life, wait till August! All the twenties are goin’ to have to register for war work soon. Why don’t you just wait and see?’

‘Because till I’m twenty, my life is my own, and until They tell me what to do and where to go, I’ll do what I want. I’m goin’ to find that house, just to look at it. I’ve got to, can’t you understand?’

‘I’m trying! But what’s going to happen if you can’t get there and back in a day? Where are you goin’ to sleep and what’ll you use for money? And how will you let me know if you end up in trouble? Ring me up on me telephone, will you?’

‘Nell, I’ll be all right! It’s somewhere I’ve got to go. Then I’ll do what the Government tells me, and go where they tell me come August. But, just this once, don’t try to stop me, Nell?’

‘Is there anything I can say that would?’

‘No, there isn’t. And I will be all right!’

Of course she would be all right. She was going to Candlefold, wasn’t she? What harm could come to her there?

With Aintree Racecourse behind her she could almost forget those nights of bombing, Meg thought, relaxing a little. There were fields ahead and to each side; she was in the country now and, apart from the houses in villages they drove through having criss-crosses of brown paper on the windows, you could be forgiven for thinking those nights had never happened.

Dear, kind Nell. Meg smiled, recalling that Nell had been up at the crack of dawn to see her off and taken Ma’s attaché case to put inside her gas oven, which was made of cast iron, and solid as any safe, she said.

Then she hugged Meg and told her to take care, demanding to know what poor Doll would say if she knew what her daughter was up to. And Meg smiled and hugged her back, and kissed her cheek, and almost said that Ma did know; was waiting for her at the pump trough.

She hadn’t said it, though, because if she had Nell would have said the bombing had driven her out of her mind, and had her locked up!

‘Ta-ra, well,’ she had said instead. ‘See you as soon as maybe, Nell.’

‘Never mind maybe! You’ll get yourself back tonight before it’s dark!’ Nell called after her, but Meg had waved her hand without turning round – bad luck to turn round, Kip said – and made for Lyra Street and Scotland Road at the bottom of it. Her heart had thumped something awful, she remembered, though she was calm enough now she was on her way.

She looked at her watch. It was nearly eight, and once she was on the Preston train she would be halfway there; halfway to Nether Barton and an old house called Candlefold. And to Ma.

She had come too far too quickly, Meg realized when told at Preston station there were no trains to Nether Barton. Never had been, and that if she wanted to get to a place like that, then she had better try her luck at the bus depot.

Luck was with her. There was a bus service, though sadly she had missed the eleven o’clock, and there wouldn’t be another until two. Fuel rationing, see? Bus services had been cut by half.

‘Then I’ll have to try to hitch,’ she said disconsolately, asking to be pointed in the direction of the Whalley road, along which she walked, right arm swinging, thumb jutting, half an hour later. She had just decided to accept any vehicle that stopped, men or not, when, with a clatter and a clang a milk lorry drew in a few yards ahead of her.

‘Going anywhere near Nether Barton?’ she called to the driver.

‘Sure. Got three farms to collect around that area. Get in, and don’t slam the door! And what are you staring at, then?’

‘Since you’re askin’ – you.’ Meg closed the door carefully. ‘I’ve never seen a lady lorry driver before. What made you want to drive a lorry?’

‘Money. And the Army, who gives me damn all for taking my husband off me, never mind enough to keep my kids on. Got three. Mum looks after them for me. But why is a young girl like yourself going to a dead hole like Nether Barton?’

‘Relations. Ma died, see, three months ago. I’m trying to trace her family.’ Not lies, exactly. ‘I’ll be twenty in August and my age group’ll have to register for war work, so I’m making the most of me time till then. And taking a bit of a break, after the bombing.’

‘You’re from Liverpool? Nasty, that blitz. Your home all right?’

‘Yes, thanks be. But all of a sudden I wanted to get out of the place. Them Germans have left it in a hell of a mess.’

‘Well, you’ll get plenty of peace and quiet where you’re going!’ Again, the hearty laugh. ‘Now I’m turning left at the next crossroads; got a collection at Smithies Farm, then it’s full speed ahead to Nether Barton, and your auntie.’

‘Cousin,’ she supplied, choosing to forget the lies that slipped off her tongue with no bother at all. ‘Honest to God, I can’t get over a woman drivin’ a lorryload of milk churns!’

All at once she was enjoying herself, and very soon she would be at Candlefold, though what she would do then was wide open to debate!

‘Where did you say you were going?’ the driver asked.

‘Candlefold.’ The word came lovingly.

‘No Candlefold Farm around these parts. Leastways, if there is it hasn’t got a milk herd.’

‘It isn’t a farm. How am I goin’ to set about finding it, do you suppose?’

‘I’ll drop you off at the shop in the village when we get there. It’s a post office too, and the lady behind the counter delivers the local letters. She’ll be able to tell you. Now, hang on. This lane’s a bit bumpy!’

The lady in the post office at Nether Barton did indeed know where Candlefold was.

‘Going after the job?’ she asked.

‘Job?’

‘In the window, on a postcard. Thought you’d come in to ask for directions.’

‘Oh, er, yes!’ Heaven help her, a job! ‘Any idea what it’s about?’

‘Just general help around the place, I imagine. Hours to suit, Polly said, or live in. They’re pretty desperate, if you ask me. Mrs John’s got a lot on her plate.’

‘It’s a big house, isn’t it?’

‘Not any more, so to speak. The powers-that-be took Candlefold – left the Kenworthys only the very old part of the house that used to be the servants’ quarters in the old days. But there’s no help to be had now for love nor money, and the Kenworthys such nice people. Real gentry, you know!’

‘Ar.’ She did know. Ma had said much the same thing. Often. ‘So how will I get there?’

‘Straight down the road you’ll see the gates. They’re locked, so carry on a couple of hundred yards till you come to a stile. From there, cross the field to the far corner and you’ll come out at the back of the house – the part they’re living in now. It’s the way I go to deliver the letters. You’ll see a stone archway that opens on to the courtyard – the door is straight ahead of you. Are you used to housework, then?’

‘Yes. And I nursed Ma when she was sick. I’m not afraid to roll my sleeves up.’

‘Then you’ll be more than welcome, if you suit. Old Mrs Kenworthy is bedridden, poor lady. In pain a lot of the time. Would be a mercy if she was to slip away. But I’m not one to gossip, you’ll understand.’

‘Oh, of course not! And thanks for your help.’

‘Be sure to let me know how things go,’ called the postmistress as Meg left, and she turned to smile, and said she would, then took a deep breath because her heart was thudding so.

A job at Candlefold! Ma had known about it all along! Must have, or why was her daughter here now, flush-cheeked and hardly able to believe her luck, because all she had ever thought to do was get a look, somehow, at that pump trough.

She picked up her bag, straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin, walking head high as Ma had always done, no matter how bad things had been.

‘This is it, Meg!’ And oh, if there really was a heaven and a God in it, she could do with a bit of help right this minute because she needed – no, wanted – that job; wanted to live and work in the middle of fields and trees and be happy like Ma had been. She’d had enough of Tippet’s Yard and rows of little houses and mucky streets and bombs, and here, on a plate, was her chance to get out of it!

The gates, when Meg reached them, were chained and padlocked. They were wide and tall, and patterned in scrolls and swirls, and far more beautiful than the gates to Sefton Park taken away by the iron collectors. She was glad They hadn’t melted down Candlefold’s gates. She gazed down the long, straight drive to a red-brick, two-storeyed house with little gabled windows in the roof. Even from a distance, she could see that the downstairs windows were shuttered from the inside; that the drive was weed-choked, the grass either side of it in need of cutting.

She remembered Ma’s faded photographs and the trees and lawns and flowerbeds and the garden party for wounded soldiers. For whatever reason the Government had taken the house, they’d got it well shut up! And why could those men in London just take what they wanted because there was a war on; your house, your car and, at the time of Dunkirk, your little boat, even!

Meg wondered what Ma would have made of the neglect, then turned abruptly away. That part of Candlefold was of little interest to her. It was a pump trough she needed to find!

The stile looked over a field of sheep and lambs. Meg hoped sheep weren’t fierce, then decided it was only bulls she needed to look out for! Carefully, at first, looking to either side, she began to walk.

The lambs were pretty little things; the old mothers just looked at her with stupid faces, then went on with their chewing. Braver now, she made for the corner of the field and the far stile that would lead to an archway and a courtyard.

The archway was in the centre of an old, thick wall. The stones were uneven and plants with tiny purple flowers grew between the cracks. There was a safeness about that wall, as if it had stood for hundreds of years and seen things you would never dream of. Dry-mouthed, she stepped beneath it to see the cobbled courtyard of the long-ago photograph.

Her heart began to thud, her cheeks flushed red. She was looking at Ma’s heaven on earth and a trough Dolly Blundell once stood beside to be photographed. Ma had sat on that old granite trough often, and had laughed beside it and been happy.

All at once Meg knew she had done the right thing, because there was nothing foolish in following a dream. Head high, she made for the wide, low, nail-studded door, because it was no use just standing there, wallowing in sentimentality! Ma had got her here and now it was up to herself. Chin jutting, she knocked hard with bare knuckles.

‘It isn’t any use doing that!’

Meg spun round to see a fair-haired girl wearing a short cotton dress.

‘Beg pardon?’ It was all she could think of to say.

‘That door’s so thick they wouldn’t hear you knocking on the other side. You’ve got to ring.’

She took the chain that dangled from a bell hanging beside the door, shaking it to make the most terrible din.

‘See what you mean,’ Meg grinned. ‘They’ll hear that half a mile away!’

‘They once did. Years and years ago, when this was a farmhouse, they rung that bell so the workers in the fields could hear it. Now, we shouldn’t really use it. Bells aren’t supposed to be rung, except if the invasion starts, but we are so far from civilization, it doesn’t matter. I’m Polly Kenworthy, by the way, and I hope you’ve come about the job. Come in, won’t you?’

She lifted the heavy iron latch, pushing on the door with a shoulder. It opened slowly, creaking protest.

‘Hecky!’ Meg gazed at the huge, high room. Its walls were wood-panelled, the roof rounded and high. Despite the warmth of the day and the brightness outside, it was dim and cool.

‘Mm. Like the inside of a church, isn’t it? Come into the kitchen and sit down whilst I find Mummy. You have come about the job?’ she asked anxiously.

‘I have, though I haven’t got any references. Worked in a shop that got bombed, see?’

‘Look – we’re so desperate for help I don’t suppose references will be asked for. Mummy’s a pretty fair judge of people. I’m sure she’ll like you. What’s your name, by the way?’

‘Meg Blundell.’ For no reason she could think of she offered her hand, which was taken without hesitation and shaken warmly.

‘Take a pew. I think Mummy will be with Gran – or Nanny.’

‘No she isn’t. She heard the bell!’ The voice from the doorway caused Meg to turn. ‘Gran is comfortable for the time being, and Nanny is asleep. I’m Mary Kenworthy. Have you come about the job? If you have, you’ll be the first! Girls don’t want to bury themselves in the middle of nowhere these days. Be a dear, Polly, and put the kettle on? You’ll join us, Miss – er …?’

‘Blundell. Meg. And I wouldn’t mind living here. When you come from Liverpool that’s been bombed something terrible, a bit of peace and quiet is just what the doctor ordered!’

She stopped, embarrassed, wondering if she had gone too far; been just a little bit forward.

‘Then you’re welcome, Meg, if you won’t mind helping out sometimes with two elderly ladies. I’d better tell you right from the start that Mrs Kenworthy senior is an invalid. She has chronic arthritis and we have to do everything for her – sometimes even feed her. And Nanny is still with us. She is fit of body, but her mind has gone. She’s very childlike now, and can be rather – well, mischievous, you know, if we don’t watch her. There would be quite a bit of running up and down stairs, I’m afraid.’

Her eyes were anxious – pleading almost, Meg thought; looked as if a good night’s sleep would do her no harm. And she was straight, an’ all, looked you in the eyes, which was to be expected of a Kenworthy.

‘Then right from the start, I’d better tell you I haven’t got references, but if you’ll give me a try, I don’t mind giving a hand with naughty nannies,’ she grinned, ‘and I know a bit about nursing sick people. Ma died of TB, you see, so I know what it’s like.’

‘Tuberculosis? Oh, my dear, I hope you –’

‘No. I haven’t got it,’ Meg interrupted. ‘When Ma died, the people from the Health came and stoved out the house – sent me to hospital for tests. I’m all right. I didn’t catch it. I’m only pale because that’s the way I always am!’

‘Please – forgive me. But it’s natural to ask, you’ll understand?’ Nervously, she brushed her hair from her face. ‘And I’m not too worried about references. You’ve got an open face, and I’m not often wrong about people. Will you give it a try for a couple of weeks? The wages would be a pound a week, all found, and there would be time off, which we could arrange between us. Shall we give it a go?’

‘I’d have to live in …’ Meg warned.

‘That would be no problem.’

‘Then when would you want me to start? I’d have to go home first, see to one or two things and collect a ration card for two weeks. I could start the day after tomorrow, if that’s all right with you – and if you’re sure about me, ’cause you don’t know the first thing about me, do you? I might be a Liverpool scally!’

‘Scally?’ Polly set down a tray.

‘Scallywag. A wrong ’un, a thief. Somebody what’s light-fingered.’

‘And are you a scally?’

‘Course not – though youse people aren’t to know that. But I’d like to give it a try, and the wages are quite satisfactory,’ she added primly.

‘So let’s have that cup of tea.’ Relief showed plainly on Mary Kenworthy’s face. ‘Then Polly can show you the house and where you’ll be sleeping. We have three empty bedrooms; you can choose the one you like best. The bus to Preston leaves the village at five – that gives us a couple of hours, doesn’t it? Will you be very late getting back, my dear?’

‘About ten o’clock, but it’ll still be light. No bother!’

Meg took the china cup and saucer with a hand that shook. There was so much she wanted to say, to ask – like why, all of a sudden, should she be so lucky and what would go wrong to spoil it? She had come here on a whim to find a welcome she had not expected. But maybe it was all a dream; maybe she was going to wake up in the slant-roofed bedroom and draw back the curtains to see rooftops and Tippet’s Yard.

Yet it wasn’t a dream. All this was honest-to-God real, and if she didn’t grab the chance with both hands she was a fool, because Ma must have gone to a lot of trouble to get her here! It was the only explanation that made any sense. She had Ma to thank for this!

‘And where have you been till now?’ Nell Shaw demanded. ‘Coming in at this hour! Tommy and me was sick with worry!’

‘You know where I’ve been. It’s only eleven, and I’m ravenous, Nell. There’s a tin of Spam Kip sent in the cupboard. What say we open it and make ourselves some sarnies? Then I’ll tell you all about it!’

‘There’s something to tell, then? You found the place?’

‘I did! And a job too! A pound a week; live in! We’re giving it a go for two weeks, see if I suit – and if they suit me. Remember the photo of Ma and two maids standing by a stone trough? Well, it’s still there. It was like stepping back more’n twenty years!’

‘What sort of a job? Skivvying?’

‘People like the Kenworthys don’t employ skivvies! But let’s make a brew, Nell, and a plate of sarnies, then I’ll tell you about it all, right from when the milk lorry picked me up.’

‘You’ve been hitching lifts, then?’

‘The driver was a lady. Look, Nell, let me tell it? Don’t be saying I’ve done something I shouldn’t till you’ve got the whole story?’

‘All right, then. I’ll provide the tea; you supply the sarnies. Then we’ll have a good natter.’

‘Where’s Tommy?’

‘Gone to bed ages ago. Said I was bothering over nothing!’

‘You said he was worried sick.’

‘Now see here, Meg Blundell, you get on with them sarnies and I’ll go fetch me tea caddy! All right?’

They talked long into the night about how it had been; about the lady at the post office and the job on a card in the window; about Polly Kenworthy and Mrs John and the elderly ladies and the pump trough; talked about peace and quiet and the little white-walled bedroom with matching curtains and bedspread, and the washstand with a blue and white china bowl and jug on it.

‘And you’ll be expected to help clean the place and run up and down the stairs and fetch and carry; all for a pound a week!’

‘A pound a week and Candlefold, Nell!’

‘So Doll was right?’

‘Ma’s heaven on earth, and I want to give it a try. It might only be for two weeks, but I want to go there.’

‘Tommy and me’ll miss you.’

‘I’m not going to Australia! Once the buses and trains get back to normal I can be here and back easy in a day – if I take on the job permanently, that is.’

‘You will. That house has got you charmed like it charmed your ma. What’s to do with the place? Even after she’d got herself into trouble, not one bad word did Doll say about it!’

‘And now I’ve seen it I know why.’ Though there weren’t words to tell about the brightness of the air; about the trees and the sky, all high and wide around them. And the old part of Candlefold, with its huge entrance hall and walls covered from floor to ceiling in carved wooden panels. And the big bell beside the door, and birdsong.

‘Ar, hey. I suppose there’ll be no living with you till you’ve given it a try. And it won’t be for long.’

‘Two weeks, Nell.’

Only it wouldn’t be for two weeks. Candlefold had called her, and as far as Meg Blundell was concerned she was staying for ever!

‘Did you tell them who you was?’ Nell asked, spooning tea.

‘Decided not to. Said nuthink about Ma, or that I was born there. I’m going to wait and see what I can find out first. As far as they’re concerned I’m someone who went there for a job. I never said nuthink about Ma getting this house for a shillin’, and anyway, the man who gave it to her is dead now – Mr John Kenworthy. He died when Polly was quite young. The old lady who is sick is his mother, Mrs Kenworthy, and the other one – Polly’s mother – is called Mrs John so as not to get them mixed up.’

‘And the name Blundell – didn’t it ring any bells? After all, it wasn’t all that long ago. Surely Mrs John would remember a housemaid called Dolly Blundell who got herself into trouble? That lady would be there when you was born, don’t forget. It was her husband who let Doll stay there to have you, then gave her this house.’

‘Nothing was said, Nell. After all, Blundell is a fairly common name around these parts. There’s Ince Blundell and Blundellsands, the posh areas. And I don’t look anything like Ma did. Why should Mrs John get suspicious?’

‘OK, then – why should she?’ Nell shrugged, and wondered instead about the flush to Meg’s cheeks and the brightness of her eyes.

‘Is there a son?’ she asked bluntly.

‘I believe so. He’s a soldier and Polly is engaged to his best friend. Want mustard on yours, Nell?’

Although they had talked late into the night, Meg awoke early, lying very still for a little while to hug her joy to her.

There was much to do today. She must take her ration book to the Ministry of Food office, get a temporary card for two weeks; and she must draw out the money from Ma’s bankbook and write to Kip and make arrangements for Tommy and Nell to take in her coal ration when it came, and for them both to keep an eye on number 1 for a couple of weeks, after which she would be back. Back to visit, she hoped, on her first day off, though there was no need to say that, yet.

‘I did hear the buses are gettin’ through again to Skelhorne Street,’ Nell said. ‘You’ll be able to get a bus from Lime Street through to Ormskirk tomorrow, no messin’.’

‘Yes, and maybe catch the eleven o’clock bus to Nether Barton.’ Allowing for the walk, carrying her case, she could be ringing that bell tomorrow by one o’clock. ‘You’re not mad at me, Nell?’

‘No. More mad at myself at realizing I’m goin’ to miss you! But Doll would want you to give it a try, and if heaven gets to be too much for you, girl, there’s always Tippet’s Yard to come home to! Reckon I’d do the same if I was your age!’

The post office in Scotland Road was open again for business, its windows boarded up, the inside gloomy. There was a queue in front of Meg and a longer one behind her.

‘Gotyeridentitycard?’ The lady behind the counter was too busy to go into minute details over a few pounds. Meg handed over the withdrawal form and her mother’s identity card.

‘Four pounds, ten shillings you want?’

‘Yes, please. Leave the eight and six in, will you?’

Meg signed D. Blundell with the exaggerated looped D and a rounded B. It might, she thought, have been her mother’s own signature, so well had she done it.

‘Next, please!

The clerk pushed the book, in which she had folded three pound notes, three ten-shilling notes and the identity card, under the grille.

Meg walked out into the road, relief shuddering through her. Though why she should feel like this she didn’t know, because it was her money, left to her in Ma’s will, and if she had signed – or was it forged? – Ma’s name, she hadn’t done anything illegal; not really illegal!

The branch office of the Ministry of Food, next door but one, which had been damaged by the same bomb that had closed the post office, was now open too.

‘Gotyeridentitycard?’

If there was a phrase that would go down in history when this war was over, Meg decided, it was the time-after-time requests for identity cards!

Meg offered her ration book and watched as two weeks’ food was obliterated by a purple stamp and two one-week emergency cards filled in with her name and identity number.

Now there was only a letter to write to Kip, the floors at number 1 to be swept and mopped, and the last of the bomb dust shifted from the furniture. Then she would pack enough for two weeks, collect Ma’s case from Nell, and all would be ready for an early start in the morning.

She wouldn’t sleep tonight, but who cared?

Four

Meg was surprised and pleased to find Polly Kenworthy waiting at the bus stop.

‘How did you know when I’d be getting here?’ she beamed.

‘I didn’t. I was posting a parcel to Davie and Mrs Potter asked me if the young lady had managed to find Candlefold – about the job, she meant – and I told her you had. And that you’d be coming today. The bus was about due, so I hung around just in case.’

‘Did you think I wouldn’t come?’

‘I hoped you would. My bike is outside the post office. We can put your case on the seat – save you carrying it.’

‘That’s very kind of you,’ Meg said slowly, remembering how her mother had spoken, feeling that now was her chance to knock the edges off her Liverpool accent; talk proper, like Ma had done.

‘So how often do you write to your young man,’ Meg asked as they walked.

‘Every day. Sometimes more than that – even if it’s only I love you and miss you – oh, you know what it’s like when you’d give anything to be with them for just a couple of minutes.’

‘No. I don’t. There’s someone I write to; he’s in the Merchant Navy. He’d like us to go steady – even said he’d buy me a ring in Sydney, but I hope he won’t. I – I’m not ready to be in love with anybody yet.’

‘Not ready, Meg? But falling in love just happens, whether you’re ready for it or not! You see a man and that’s it! The minute I laid eyes on Davie everything went boing! inside me. He’s in Mark’s regiment – Mark is my brother, did I tell you? – and he got a crafty thirty-six-hour pass and brought Davie along. They were walking across the courtyard, Mark said something, and Davie threw back his head and laughed. That was the exact moment I fell in love with him. I didn’t know who he was and it never occurred to me to wonder if he had a girl or might even be married. He was the man I wanted; simple as that! And don’t tell me I’m too young to know my own mind, that I haven’t been around enough. I met Davie, so I don’t want to gad around now. I just want us to be married.’

‘And will you be, or must you wait till you’re twenty-one?’

‘Mummy would like me to wait. She agreed to our being engaged but she wants us to give it time, so we’re both sure. Mind, if Davie gets posted overseas she might let us get married on his embarkation leave, which wouldn’t be very satisfactory, really.’

‘See what you mean. It would be lovely bein’ married, but it might only be for a week.’

‘Yes. I’d be a lonely young wife for the rest of the war, probably. I wish I were twenty-one.’

‘How old are you, Polly?’

‘Twenty, almost.’

‘Ar. You’ll have to register when you’re twenty, for war work.’

‘Don’t I know it! If Davie and me were married, They couldn’t send me into the armed forces – only make me find a job. I’d like to stay at Candlefold. When I’m not helping in the house, I work in the kitchen garden, digging for victory, sort of. We grow a lot of vegetables and saladings and soft fruits – apples and pears too. Once, when fuel wasn’t rationed, we could heat the greenhouses and get early crops, but not any more.

‘When the Government took the brick house, they left us the kitchen garden, and the Home Farm, which Mrs Potter’s brother-in-law rents from us. I suppose it was a good thing really that They wanted the brick part of the house. It saves us heating it, because one bag of coal a week doesn’t go far, does it? Thank goodness we have the woods. We go scavenging if there’s been a gale, and bring in branches that have come down and saw them into logs. Every little helps.’

‘So what do we do here?’ They had come to the stile. ‘Shall I give you a lift over with the bike?’

‘No. We’ll carry on to the crossroads. A lane leads to the house from there. It’s a bit further to walk but it’s better than pushing the bike through the grass.’

‘Tell me, please.’ Meg decided it was time to sort out the way things were to be. ‘I’ve never worked as a servant before. In the shop, we had to call ladies madam and men sir. Is that what I call your mother? And do I call you Miss Polly?’

‘Good heavens, no! You’re not a servant, Meg. You’re a home help and we’re glad to have you! I’m Polly; Mummy is Mrs John, Gran is Mrs Kenworthy, so there’s no mixing them up. My real name is Mary, like Mummy’s, so I get called Polly, which I like. With two Marys and two Mrs Kenworthys, you’ll see what I mean. Oh, and there’s Nanny Boag!’

‘Boag!’ Meg gasped, remembering the lady on the photograph.

‘Mm. An unusual name, isn’t it? Scottish, I believe. She came to Gran when my pa was born, then stayed on, and when Mark and me arrived she was our nanny too. She’s part of the family really, when she remembers who she is. Mostly, these days, she’s in love with the Prince of Wales!’

‘But we haven’t got a Prince of Wales! He shoved off with Mrs Simpson.’

‘Nanny chooses to ignore that, poor thing. She was such a love. Now, she’s in a world of her own most times!’

‘And you go along with it?’

‘We-e-ll, she’s no trouble, really. You’ll soon get used to her ways.’

‘And Mrs Kenworthy?’

‘Darling Gran. She doesn’t have much of a time of it. You’ll be kind to her, won’t you, Meg? Often, especially when the weather is cold, she’s in pain; sometimes her hands are so bad she can’t hold a cup. She doesn’t complain, though, and she’ll be so pleased if you pop in from time to time, ask her if she’s comfy – maybe have a little chat. She hasn’t been downstairs for ages, poor love.’

‘Then wouldn’t it be better if she was?’ Meg reasoned. ‘When Ma got real bad, I made her a bed on the living-room sofa.’

‘We’ve thought about that, but someone would have to sleep downstairs, then, and there isn’t room. It’s one of the reasons we need you, Meg. Mummy gets tired sometimes.’

‘Then it’s a good job you’ll be getting an extra pair of feet,’ Meg smiled as they came into the courtyard from the far end. ‘And doesn’t the house look lovely, all covered in flowers?’ Her mother might once have stood at this very spot and felt as she did, Meg marvelled.

Ma? She sent out her thoughts as they passed the pump trough. Do you know I’m here?

There was no reply; she hadn’t really expected one. But a red rose that trailed over the doorway blew in the breeze as if it were nodding to her, telling her what she needed to know.

‘Here we are, then!’ Polly pushed open the door. ‘Welcome to Candlefold, Meg Blundell, and I do hope you’ll stay.’

‘I hope so too.’ Meg returned the smile, and contentment washed over her.

Oh, but she would! She had come home to Candlefold and to Ma, and no doubt about it, she was stoppin’!

‘So you’ve come, Meg!’ Mary Kenworthy – Mrs John – stood at the door, drying her hands. ‘I’m so glad. Be a dear, Polly; pop and tell Nanny I’ll be up in five minutes! She’s been ringing her bell for ages and I was determined not to answer it until I’d peeled the potatoes!’

‘OK,’ Polly sighed, disappearing.

‘Well, now that I’m here, peelin’ potatoes will be my job, and once I’ve met Nanny, I’ll run up and down when she rings. But should you be waitin’ on her, Mrs John? Why can’t she come down once in a while? Is she bad on her feet, or somethin’?’

‘No. It’s just her mind that’s sick – muddled. Nanny lives in the past, you see, and the nursery is her domain still. She sleeps in the night nursery and the day nursery is her sitting room. She insists the stairs are too much for her, but it could be because she doesn’t want to leave her rooms. Yet there must still be some semblance of reason in her head, because I think she’s unwilling to come downstairs in case the present catches up with her! She knows that Mark has joined the Army. She just wants to pretend she has children in the nursery still, and the war hasn’t happened. My husband was severely wounded in the last one – his abdomen and chest. He died when Polly was four. Nanny never forgave the Kaiser!’

‘So when this war started she decided to ignore it?’

‘She was already getting a little vague; when she found we were at war again it seemed to be the last straw. And when Mark left, that was it! She just lapsed into her long-ago world. She’s eighty, you know. Best we go along with her little moods, I suppose. She was so good to me when John died. I don’t know how I’d have pulled myself together if it hadn’t been for Nanny.’

‘But she rings her bell to call you like a servant, Mrs John – surely, that can’t be right?’

‘No, but understandable. She’s back in the days when we had a staff to run the house – we never called them servants, Meg – and she still thinks she’s only got to ring.’

‘Well, she won’t be ringing till she finds her bell,’ Polly grinned from the kitchen doorway. ‘I’ve hidden it behind the curtain. I’ll take you to meet her after lunch, Meg. You’ll learn to humour her. She’s no trouble really. If she gets a bit bossy you just walk away!’

‘But why do you have to put up with such a carry-on? I mean, she isn’t family.’

‘No, but she’s Nanny,’ Mary Kenworthy smiled gently, ‘which is pretty much the same thing. And she stayed with us through good times and bad. Almost family, Meg.’

‘Ar. I see,’ Meg nodded, though she didn’t see at all! That Nanny seemed a right old faggot! In the photograph she’d had a mouth on her like a steel trap! Nanny Boag and Master Mark her mother had written on the back of the picture of Polly’s brother in his christening gown.

But no one here knew about the photographs of Candlefold and no one would get to know until she was good and ready to tell them. Good-hearted though they were, and decent to a servant who’d got into trouble, Meg wanted to find out for herself how it had really been, and not be told kindly and gently about it by an embarrassed Mrs John. Because that was how it would be if ever she admitted being Dorothy Blundell’s daughter, and herself born at Candlefold!

‘By the way,’ Polly giggled, ‘Nanny is busy at the moment sticking pins into a newspaper picture of Mrs Simpson. I’ll leave her to it and take you up there, Meg, when she’s back to more normal, sort of. Seeing a strange face in her present mood might be a bit too much for her!’

‘Oooh! She isn’t a witch, is she? Sticking pins, I mean!’ Meg gasped.

‘Don’t worry, my dear. Nanny, even at her most troublesome, is no worse than a child having a fit of the sulks. I’m sure she doesn’t know the first thing about witchcraft, even though it’s supposed to be witch country around these parts! Now, shall Polly take you to your room, then show you round the house and what is left to us of the gardens and outbuildings? And the kitchen garden, of course. And when you do, Polly, can you ask Mr Potter if we can have a couple of spring cabbages?’

‘Potter? That’s the name of the lady at the post office, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right. Our gardener is her husband. We are such a tiny community that everyone seems connected in some way or another. It’s Mrs Potter’s sister and her husband – Armitage – who rent Home Farm from us. Everybody knows everybody. And by the time you’ve had two weeks with us, Meg, you’ll know if you want to be a part of it or not. There are no picture houses or dance halls in Nether Barton. Only hops, sometimes, in the parish hall. Will you miss things like that?’

She said it anxiously, Meg thought, as if to think that her home help might leave at the end of the fortnight troubled her.

‘I might, Mrs John, but I don’t think I will. After that bombing it’s safer here! And anyway, Ma and me always wanted to live in the country, so I hope I suit.’

‘I think you will. And by the way,’ Polly smiled at her mother, ‘is it omelettes for lunch? I can get some saladings from Potter if it is.’

‘Omelettes!’ Meg gasped. ‘You need eggs for them, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but we have our own hens, you see, and we’re very lucky to have our own cow too. A little Jersey. We keep her at Home Farm with the herd there, and Armitage milks her for us. So you can have plenty of milk on your porridge at breakfast, and an egg as well.

‘At night we have a big mug of Ovaltine – if we’ve been able to get any in the shops, that is – or milky cocoa. We sit round the table here, and call it our quiet time; think of the day ahead. We Kenworthys are optimists. Tomorrow is a day to look forward to, not the day that never comes! Are you an optimist, Meg Blundell?’

‘Yes, I am,’ she said firmly, because who in her right mind wouldn’t be an optimist in a house like this, with all the milk she could drink, and a fresh egg for breakfast?

The afternoon sun warmed the stones of the old house to honey, and bees buzzed around roses and clematis that climbed the walls and peeped into upstairs windows.

‘I like this bit of Candlefold best.’ Polly waved an embracing hand. ‘Oh, the newer, red-brick part of the house is very elegant, but this old greystone bit is solid and safe, somehow. The walls are two feet thick, which makes it cooler in summer and warmer in winter. The very first Kenworthy built this in 1320; look over the door, you can still make out the date. It was chiselled there when a yeoman farmer brought his bride here and fathered eight children on her, though only two lived.

‘Children died in medieval times. I suppose my early ancestors thought themselves lucky to rear two sons to manhood. The elder took the farm, as it was then; the younger went to London to seek his fortune, so maybe there is another line of Kenworthys running parallel to ours. Fortunately, the one who lived here was taught to read and write by the monks at the abbey, so he could count his money, and read his Bible – in Latin, of course!’

‘And I bet he gave plenty to the Church, an’ all!’ Meg remembered from history lessons at school how large the Church had loomed in long-ago England.

‘Yes. Mummy says they gave their tithe, always – a tenth of all the crops they grew and a fair bit of the cash in hand, so to speak. I don’t know when our lot stopped being Catholics. A lot of the families around this part of Lancashire never gave up the old religion – held secret Masses. But it seems the sixteenth-century Kenworthys thought it politic to be Anglo-Catholic. It’s common knowledge they sat on the fence during the Civil War too, paying lip service to Cromwell, yet all the time helping royalists or hiding them if they were on the run from Roundhead soldiers! I suppose we got very good at surviving; that’s why we’re still here!’

There had been a Kenworthy at Waterloo and one fought in the Crimea. ‘Our lot have lived here for six hundred years, Meg. No one else but a direct-line Kenworthy. God, wouldn’t it be awful if something happened and the line ended? Hell! I hate wars!’

Tears filled her eyes and Meg was in no doubt she was thinking of Davie, and thought herself lucky she wasn’t in love – not properly in love – with Kip Lewis. Loving someone so desperately took over your whole life; she knew that already from the way Polly went from smiles to tears in seconds. Mind, Polly Kenworthy was lucky knowing who she was, Meg had to admit; knew all about her ancestors way back to 1320, whilst Margaret Mary Blundell didn’t even know her grandparents, nor even who had fathered her. Polly was twice lucky because she had background and a pedigree.

It was all because of Candlefold, which wasn’t just a very old house, but a way of life. Candlefold had become Ma’s happy place because before she had come here to work, the life she’d led hadn’t been worth mentioning. Where Ma was born and reared Meg would never know now; sufficient only to accept that Ma’s life began here, as a fourteen-year-old girl sent into domestic service.

Small wonder Dolly Blundell had loved the place, and the kindness and happiness and the belonging; no prizes for guessing where Ma had blossomed into a pretty girl who laughed a lot, for hadn’t she always been laughing or smiling on those photographs?

Who were you, Ma? Who am I? And why does this house have a hold over you and me? Why did you tell me with your thoughts that I must come here?

‘Hey! A penny for them! I asked if you’d like to see the other part of the house, but you were miles away.’

‘I was thinkin’ that you know so much about your family and I know nuthink at all about mine.’

‘But you must know something – your mother and father and your grandparents – unless you were a foundling.’

‘What’s a foundling?’ Meg scowled, sorry she had said what she had.

‘An orphan of the storm, an abandoned child …’

‘Well, I wasn’t! You know I had a mother! But I never knew my father. He was a seaman and died at sea of plague, or something. Anyway, they sewed his body in sailcloth and weighted it and buried him at sea. That’s all I know. Never knew my grandparents’

She told stinking lies too. Her father dying at sea, indeed! Mind, if he had, that was the way he’d have gone, because Kip once told her that was how it was. One of Kip’s crew had died of yellow fever and they’d got him overboard pretty quick, he’d said, so it wouldn’t spread.

‘I never knew my grandpa; can hardly remember my father either. Sometimes bits come back, but they are very hazy. But I’ve got a gran, and you can share her with me, Meg. So are we going to have a look at the brick house, then?’

‘Won’t we get into trouble? Won’t there be guards?’

‘Not a bod in sight. Oh, someone comes about once a month to check the place over, and sometimes a van arrives and things are taken in. Mummy says she thinks that either documents or records or works of art are stored there. Well, they couldn’t leave all the stuff in London for the Luftwaffe to bomb, could they? Museums and art galleries were emptied as soon as war started, don’t forget. Maybe some of it is here, snug and safe – who knows?’

‘But don’t you care, Polly, about them nicking your house?’

‘No! Why should I? All I care about is that this war is over as soon as maybe, and that Davie and Mark will come through it safely – and all the servicemen and women. Wars are wrong and stupid. Look what happened to my father. His war wounds slowly killed him!’ Tears came once more, and Meg knew she was thinking about Davie again.

‘Ar hey, girl! Nuthink’s going to happen to your feller! How could it, when he’s never out of your thoughts? And your brother’s goin’ to be all right too, so how about you and me doin’ a tour of the place? Then you can take me to meet your gran, eh?’

‘Yes, of course!’ Polly pulled her hand across her eyes. ‘And Nanny too.’

‘Y-yes …’ Daft old Nanny, who lived in a pretend world and stuck pins in pictures and had tantrums you walked away from. No harm in her at all! Childlike, Mrs John said. So why, all at once, did Meg not want to visit the nursery? Why did just thinking about it make her uneasy, even though she would be meeting an old lady who had brought up two generations of Kenworthys and who Polly obviously loved; Mrs John too! Why should she feel peculiar about meeting someone she had only before seen on a photograph as a nanny in long skirts, a baby boy in her arms?

She did not know what gave her the creepy feeling. Sufficient to say she would know soon enough if her fears held substance. This very afternoon, in fact, when they climbed the stairs to the nursery.

The wide, cushioned windowsill in her bedroom made a comfortable seat and Meg sat, arms around knees, looking out over fields and trees to the distant evening sky. It was past ten and the light was beginning to fade, blurring the outlines of trees and hedges, rounding them with mist. Twilight here was gentler than at Tippet’s Yard, where the fading of the light made outlines of buildings sharp and dark against the skyline. Here at Candlefold a bird sang to warn against the ending of the day, and all about was soft and hushed.

The white-painted walls of the room reflected the light from the window and softened into palest apricot; over the weathercock atop the stables, the first star appeared, low in the sky. Did you wish on first stars? Starlight star bright, first star I’ve seen tonight … Did you close your eyes and cross your fingers and wish to stay here for ever and sleep always in this blue-flowered room?

Meg closed her eyes to call back the day that had been: she and Polly pushing through a gap in the hedge and into the garden of the house the faceless ones had taken, to gaze at its shuttered windows, neglected lawns, the broad sweep of weed-choked steps. She had seen it all before in a photograph. … 1916. Garden Party … wounded soldiers. The tussocked grass was fine-trimmed then, and roses that ran wild over the front of the house were once trained into obedience. Afterwards, they had climbed the stairs to the nursery.

‘Can I come in? Polly pushed open the door. ‘I’ve brought someone to see you.’

Nanny Boag in a rocking chair, knitted slippers on her feet. She wore a printed cotton dress, and an embroidered pinafore tied at the waist. She looked younger than the long-skirted, black-bonneted lady in the photograph. Her cheeks were plump, her eyes wide as she turned eagerly.

‘Polly, dear! How nice of you to bring your little friend! What is your name, child?’

‘Meg.’

‘Meg who? Cat got your tongue? Did your nanny bring you? Where is she?’

‘In the kitchen, talking to Cook,’ Polly hastened, pink-cheeked.

‘Doesn’t Nanny get a kiss then, or have we forgotten our manners?’ The elderly woman offered her cheek; dutifully Polly kissed it.

‘Were you having a little sleep? Did we wake you? Shall we come back later?’

‘Sleep? Goodness me, no! Nanny hasn’t time to sleep! I was just thinking about Scotland and all the packing to be done! August already, and the year flown by! Go and play with your friend, dear, and don’t get into mischief! And put your bonnet on, or you’ll get freckles! Close the door quietly!’

Her eyelids drooped, her chin fell on her chest.

‘Heaven help us! What’s to do with the old girl?’ Meg gasped as they tiptoed away. ‘August? Goin’ to Scotland? It’s May!’

‘We stopped going to Scotland before Pa died. We used always to go in August, I believe.’

‘So we are both little girls, and my nanny is talking to Cook – only there isn’t a cook!’

‘Not any more.’

‘I thought she’d be – well – sterner.’

‘She was once. Now she seems to have got smaller and more frail.’

‘And if I take her tea up tomorrow, will she remember me?’

‘I doubt it,’ Polly smiled. ‘I’ll introduce you again, in the morning.’

Childlike, Meg frowned. Frail? Oh, she might be that, but her eyes had been sharp and beady; had taken in every detail of Polly’s little friend.

They had met Polly’s mother then, closing the door of Mrs Kenworthy’s room, a finger to her lips.

‘Mother-in-law is sleeping. Perhaps you could look in on her later?’

Meg picked up the tray from the floor outside the door, asking if there was anything she could do. ‘I came to help, Mrs John, and I’ve hardly done a thing.’

‘Then you can make tea. Use the small pot. We’ll count today as your settling-in day. And when we’ve had tea, will you go with Polly to feed the hens and collect the eggs? I could do with a few for a baked custard for supper.’

‘It isn’t right your mother should work so hard,’ Meg protested as they crossed the courtyard, making for the henhouse. ‘I mean – she once had people to do the housework for her, and a cook, an’ all! Now, she’s got your gran and Nanny Boag to worry about, as well as the war and food rationing. And she’s such a lovely lady.’

‘She is, Meg. I adore her. And things will get easier once you’re into the swing of it. By the way, hens drink a lot of water when they are in the lay; could you fill a bucket at the pump whilst I get the feed?’

There was an iron pump at the trough. Meg lifted the handle up and down; water splashed into the bucket.

‘Ma?’ she whispered, thinking how it had once been for Dorothy Blundell and how her life had ended in the cold and dark of a mucky yard. ‘Oh, Ma.’ She sucked in her breath sharply, then arranged her mouth into a smile as Polly waved from the far archway. ‘Coming!’ she called.

Twelve fat brown hens had run to greet them; drank long at the water trough, then pecked up the wheat Polly threw, feathered bottoms bobbing as they scratched.

‘Oh, they’re lovely!’

‘Don’t get fond of them, Meg. They aren’t pets! Would you like to collect the eggs?’

Collecting eight brown eggs, Meg thought, had been just about the nicest, most countrified thing she had ever done. She had laid them carefully in the empty feed bucket, then placed them in the wooden egg rack in the pantry.

Mind, meeting Polly’s gran had been something altogether different. It might even, Meg thought as she watched big black birds settling in the far trees, have been a disaster, but for the lies. More lies!

‘Meg Blundell, is it?’ asked the old lady whose gnarled hands rested unmoving on the counterpane. ‘How strange. We once had a housemaid called Blundell – Dorothy, her name was. Would you perhaps know of her?’

Her eyes were troubled as she said it, Meg thought, a look of apprehension in them, as if she had needed the stranger who stood at her bedside to deny it.

‘Dorothy? Oh no. Ma was called Hilda.’ Clever of her to have it all worked out – just in case! ‘An’ she wasn’t never a servant; worked in a tobacco factory. She died three months ago.’

‘Ah, yes.’ A small smile – almost of relief, Meg thought – moved the comers of Mrs Kenworthy’s mouth. ‘Just that the name brought it back …’

‘Blundell’s a common enough name around where I was born,’ Meg was quick to answer. ‘There’s even districts of Liverpool with Blundell in them. And me da died at sea,’ she added, to take care of the nameless scallywag. How glib a liar she was becoming – she who’d always prided herself in telling the truth and shaming the devil!

‘I’m very glad to meet you, Meg Blundell, for all that.’

‘And I’m very glad to meet you, Mrs Kenworthy.’ Meg took the offered hand carefully in her own, knowing that hands so swollen hurt a great deal and must not be shaken. ‘And I’m glad I’ve come here to work. It’s so beautiful. You can’t imagine how different it is from Liverpool.’

‘Where, in Liverpool?’

‘Lyra Street.’ And that took care of Tippet’s Yard, Meg thought as she offered the road where Kip’s sister lived. ‘A lot of houses got bombed around there, but I was lucky.’

‘Poor Liverpool,’ the old lady sighed. ‘We had relatives there once. One of them – a cousin – died without issue and left some of his property to my son. John, that is; Polly’s pa. But he got rid of it very quickly; sold it off. I don’t think it brought a lot at auction …’

Sold? But he’d given one – as near as dammit, that was – to her ma, hadn’t he? But for all that, ‘Ar,’ was all she said, because it was best Mrs Kenworthy shouldn’t be reminded about a place called Tippet’s Yard, or about the name signed beside that of Dorothy Blundell. She wouldn’t learn the truth by admitting whose daughter she was, because people like the Kenworthys wouldn’t tell it to her if they thought it would be hurtful. Their sort never did things that hurt.

‘Do you want us to stay for a while, Gran?’

So they talked about Davie, and how many more days it would be until he came on long leave, and Mark too. And Meg told of the thrill of collecting eggs and how lovely it was to live at Candlefold and how awful that That Lot in London could just take your house!

‘But it might have been worse, Meg. We could have had an army unit who would be marching up and down all the time, and sergeants shouting orders and men doing target practice! And those people could have thrown us out completely, don’t forget! I’m grateful they let us keep this old part, and the kitchen garden and the acres. At least we are still here. One caring owner, as they say, for six hundred years. At least we’ve been able to hold on, unbroken. And I’m slipping down in bed! Could you prop me up again – save Mary having to do it?’

So one either side of the high single bed, Polly and Meg lifted her gently, placing pillows at her back and beneath each arm for support.

‘Thank you.’ Mrs Kenworthy opened her eyes. She had closed them in anticipation of pain to come, and there had been none. ‘That’s much better. Awful of me to be so helpless …’

‘No it isn’t,’ Meg defended. ‘An’ I’m used to lifting ’cause Ma was sick for a long time with TB – and I didn’t take it,’ she supplied to save any bother. ‘I’ll come up again – see if you want anything doin’, Mrs Kenworthy.’

She had taken a liking straight away to the woman who lay so still in the lace-covered, old-fashioned bed. So softly spoken, and thanking them gratefully for comfying her in bed. Not like the old girl up the stairs, and her able to walk about and do things for herself had she wanted to! And ringing her bell to summon a long-ago housemaid to do her skivvying!

Had she once, Meg thought now, as the distant trees began to fade into the night, rung her bell and had Dorothy Blundell hurried up the stairs to do the nanny’s bidding? Had Ma carried up nursery meals when the baby in the christening gown was growing up? Mind, Ma wouldn’t have known Polly who, Meg calculated, must have been born after she left. Ma’s replacement would have answered the ringing then!

Poor Ma. Did she leave Candlefold in tears, even though they had cared for her and put a roof over her head? Had she turned for just one last look? And had she longed, even as she left, for the man who was the cause of it all to make an honest woman of her?

Well, Ma had managed without him, Meg thought defiantly. In spite of the shame and having to wear a cheap wedding ring, Ma had kept her end up till she caught TB from a woman she helped nurse, Nell said; probably when she had washed her and laid her out and got her ready for the undertaker. Ma needn’t have died if she hadn’t had to do things like that.

Yet she came up trumps in the end, God love her! Ma it had been who’d enticed her to this place where there were eggs for breakfast and fields and trees and flowers and kindness. And Dorothy Blundell’s daughter was stoppin’ here, no matter how many lies she told! And what was more, she would keep her mouth shut until she found out what she wanted to know and was good and ready to tell them who she really was. And where she had been born!

‘Come in,’ Meg answered the gentle tap on the door.

‘Thought you might be asleep …’

‘Nah, Polly. Been sittin’ at the window, thinking about today, watching it get dark. It’s like another world after Tip – after Lyra Street. Wasn’t I lucky, chancing on Mrs Potter?’ She swung her legs to the floor.

‘But we were lucky, too. Did you ever find the relations you were looking for, by the way?’

‘Weren’t any relations.’ My, but news travelled fast in Nether Barton! ‘Don’t know why I said that. As a matter of fact, I’d just got sick of Liverpool – the mess after the blitz, and so many killed, I mean – that I jumped on the first bus I saw and ended up here. Just a day away from it all, it was supposed to be.’

How many more lies?

‘And you saw the card in the post office window, and asked directions to Candlefold?’

‘Well, the store I worked in had been bombed. I needed a job and, like I said, Ma and me used to talk a lot about livin’ in the country. One day. There was this little place – all in our imagination, mind – with a garden where you didn’t get smuts all over the washing when you hung it out to dry. Only Ma didn’t make it.’ Her bottom lip trembled and she straightened it into a smile. ‘But I made it, Polly! And I’m sure Ma knows I did!’

‘And will you like it here?’

‘You bet I will!’

She would be stoppin’ till they threw her out or, come August, the Government told her to find war work. And she was moving on nowhere without a fight!

‘Mind if I stay and talk? I’ve been writing to Davie, and I always feel so lonely afterwards. Are you very tired, Meg?’

‘No. I’m all keyed up, ’s a matter of fact. Just can’t get over my luck, if you want to know. Been telling myself I’ll wake up in L-Lyra Street, and find it’s all been a dream. Let’s sit on the bed and talk?’

She closed the door; her door! It was giddy-making. Then she carefully folded back the valanced bedspread, kicked off her slippers and offered a pillow to Polly.

‘What’s them flowers called on the bedspread and curtains? They’re ever so bonny. You’ll have to teach me the names of flowers.’

‘Well, those particular ones are delphiniums. They once grew in the garden of the brick house – all shades of blue – but they’ve been overgrown. Potter says it’s going to take him for ever to lick it all into shape when he gets it back again; says Armitage ought to be allowed to take the reaper to the lawns. Says it’s the finest crop of hay he’s seen in a long time! Potter took it badly, losing the main garden, but like I pointed out to him, he had an undergardener then, and an apprentice. They were both called up into the Army, so he couldn’t have coped on his own.’

‘But you help in the kitchen garden? And feed the hens?’

‘And go to the farm for the milk. That’s the first thing I do, mornings. Then I wait for Mrs Potter and Davie’s letter.’

‘You spend your life waiting for letters, or writing them. How long since you saw your feller?’

‘Six weeks. He and Mark got a crafty forty-eight, as they call it – hours, I mean, not days!’

‘Your brother is a real good-looker, isn’t he?’ Meg called back a photograph she’d noticed in the drawing room of a soldier, a small smile on his lips and mischief in his eyes. ‘I’ll bet your Mark can get any girl he wants. Can he dance?’

‘Loves it. Davie, too. When he was last here we went to Preston to a dance, then hitched a lift back as far as Nether Barton. There was a moon, and we walked home the long way round – took us ages and ages.’ She sighed yearningly.

‘Mark wasn’t with you?’

‘No. He said he wasn’t playing gooseberry. He got into civvies as soon as he arrived and said he was going to have a lazy couple of days. Actually, he spent most of the time sawing logs and barrowing manure for Potter! D’you know, it’s lovely sitting here, chatting. Almost like having a sister!’

‘Mm. You’re a good bit younger than your brother, aren’t you?’

‘Four years. It took a bit of time to get me, I suppose. I’m adopted, actually.’

‘Adopted!’ Meg’s eyes opened wide. ‘B-but you don’t seem to mind about it.’

‘Why should I? I’ve known about it since I was old enough to be told. I actually remember when they told me – suppose it was such momentous news it stayed in my mind. Hand-picked, Mummy said I was. A little fair-haired girl.’

‘But aren’t you ever curious, Polly, about where you came from and who your mother is? And you are so like your brother it’s amazing!’

‘Mummy’s my mother. The one who had me is my other mother, but I don’t think about her – we-e-ll, hardly ever. They got me through an adoption society – hope it didn’t upset my natural mother too much, handing me over. A young girl who couldn’t keep me, I think it must have been. No one has ever told me.’

‘And don’t you wonder just a little bit who your father was?’ Meg demanded. ‘I’d want to know.’ By the heck, didn’t she just!

‘Why should I? As far as I’m concerned, the one I look on as my father died when I was little. I’m lucky, being adopted into all this, and I never forget it. After all, my other mother must have been unmarried, and you know what a rumpus that causes! Maybe she knew that the finger would have pointed at me too. Illegitimate babies always suffer, you know. I think that if ever I was to meet her, I’d tell her I was very happy, and thank her for being brave enough to give me up. It must have hurt her a lot.’

‘Oooh, Polly Kenworthy! You aren’t half cool about it. Doesn’t it bother you at all?’ Meg was still taken aback.

‘No. What bothers me is that my parents might have walked on to the next cot and decided on the baby in that one! Don’t you understand? I’m lucky being who I am and having a lovely family. Just think of it – I might never have met Davie. Now that would have been a tragedy! And I’ll tell you something, Meg. If ever I were in the same position – with Davie’s baby, I mean – I wouldn’t let anyone take it from me for adoption!’

‘And could you ever wonder if you might be pregnant?’ Imagine that happening to a Kenworthy, Meg thought wildly. ‘What I mean is – well, have you ever …?’

‘No. Have you?’

‘Heck, no! Mind, I’ve never wanted to, as a matter of fact.’

‘I have, Meg. Oh, we’ve done some pretty heavy petting and there have been times when I’ve thought, what the hell!, but either me or him have managed to count to ten in time!’

‘But what if it does happen? What’ll you do, then?’

‘Hope and pray and count! Oh heck, I’m hungry! Just to even think about me and Davie doing it always makes me want to eat. Shall we go downstairs for a glass of milk, and some bread and jam?’

‘Let’s! And shall we bring it back up here, eh?’

Laughing, they tiptoed to the kitchen.

It was a queer carry-on, Meg thought as she lay awake still, counting as the grandfather clock downstairs struck twice. Her and Polly eating jam and bread sitting crossed-legged on the bed; Polly telling her about the way it was, being in love and about being adopted. Funny, it hadn’t seemed to worry her, but she’d fallen on her feet, she admitted it! Maybe, if Ma had given her up for adoption, Meg frowned, she could have ended up at a place like this too. And even more peculiar was the fact that Polly could be so matter-of-fact about her natural father, though she’d had a long time to get used to being adopted. And who in her right mind would worry about an absent father when she’d ended up a Kenworthy? Meg sighed and turned over her pillow, closing her eyes, breathing deeply and slowly.

Her last thought, before sleep took her, was to wonder yet again which sneaky little sod had fathered her, then shoved off without a scrap of regret. But she would never know now the name of Father Unknown – and was it all that important when Polly was technically in the same boat, sort of. After all, a sneaky little sod must have fathered her too, yet it didn’t seem to bother her! So best she forget it and, like Polly, count her blessings!

Meg surveyed the drawing room she had just cleaned, sniffing the scent that was a mixing of beeswax polish and freshly picked flowers.

The drawing room had been in need of a good clean, come to think of it, but with two old ladies to fetch and carry for, and Polly working all the time she could spare in the kitchen garden, Mrs John had little time for cleaning and it would please her to see what the new home help had done to the white-walled, slate-floored, cosily-old room. Now mirrors and windows shone, woodwork gleamed. She had even polished the copper jugs before she’d crept into the forbidden garden of the brick house and gathered flowers with which to fill them. Smugly pleased with her work, she picked up the photograph of Mark Kenworthy, clucking with annoyance that any man that handsome should be heart-whole and fancy-free.

‘You like my brother, then?’ Polly smiled from the doorway. ‘And it’s drinkings-time in the kitchen. Mummy’s just made tea.’

‘Like him? He’s not a bad-looker, I’ll give you that!’ Hastily Meg replaced the likeness. ‘I don’t suppose you could blame any girl for falling for him.’

‘They do. In droves. Yet he just loves them and leaves them, even though he knows Mummy would like him to marry. After all, he’s twenty-four.’

‘Suppose your ma wants a grandson so the Kenworthys can carry on here. Why did you never grab him for yourself, Polly?’

‘Never gave it a thought – after all, he is my brother …’

‘Yes, but only by adoption, so him and you aren’t blood kin. Hadn’t you ever thought it would be lawful if you had fallen for him?’

‘N-no. All I ever wanted was for him to be my big brother. Falling in love with him never entered my head. And thank heaven it didn’t! Davie is the one I want!’

‘Can see what you mean. Reckon if you had fallen for him, there’d always have been a kind of – of – What’s the word I’m looking for?’

‘Incest?’ Polly raised a surprised eyebrow.

‘That’s it! Would’ve smacked of incest, wouldn’t it, in a roundabout way?’

‘It could have. But he seemed ages older than me when I was growing up. His friends treated me like a little girl – which I was, to them. And Mark always treated me as his kid sister, so the awful situation didn’t arise.’

‘You were waiting for Davie,’ Meg nodded, ‘though you didn’t know it.’

‘Waiting for Davie. It just about sums it up. Waiting for letters, for phone calls if he’s lucky enough to get through, waiting for his next leave; waiting to be twenty-one, then Mummy will know we aren’t going to change our minds about each other. One long wait …’

‘Ar, cheer up, queen! One of these days, when you’re least expectin’ him, he’ll be there on the doorstep!’

‘And if that happens, Meg, I wouldn’t know whether to be glad or sorry. You see, unexpected leave is often embarkation leave! But we’ll take the tea upstairs before we have our own. About time you met Nanny Boag – properly, I mean!’

‘Ar. Prop’ly.’ And hope, Meg thought, that the daft old girl had come back to earth again; hope she wasn’t still Polly’s little friend, whose nanny was in the kitchen gossiping with Candlefold’s cook!

‘Tea for upstairs.’ Mary Kenworthy was arranging cups and saucers on two small trays.

‘So sit yourself down, Mrs John. Me and Polly will take it. Don’t forget I haven’t met Nanny yet – not properly, that is.’

‘Well, she’s fine, today – or she was when I took her breakfast up. Mind, her mood changes can come on without warning, so fingers crossed.’

‘You take Gran’s first,’ Polly said as they crossed the great echoing hall, making for the stone arch in the corner of the room and the stone stairs that rose from it, ‘and I’ll take Nanny’s – prepare her for a surprise, and your second coming! Let’s hope she isn’t in – in –’

‘Cloud cuckoo land again,’ Meg grinned.

‘Fingers crossed!’ Polly smiled back, thinking yet again how lovely it was to have someone her own age about the place.

Nanny Boag had not been in cloud cuckoo land, and anyone, Meg thought as she sipped tea at the kitchen table, could have been forgiven for thinking she ever had!

‘Meg Blundell, is it?’ Emily Boag’s eyes had swept Meg from head to toes. ‘So why haven’t I met you before, miss? You arrived yesterday, at lunchtime. Where have you been until now?’

‘I – I – we-e-ll, we came, and –’

‘Yes! We came yesterday, but you were so busy planning the Scotland trip that Meg and I thought we’d better leave you to it!’ Polly had hastened.

‘Scotland, for goodness’ sake! We haven’t been to Scotland these twenty years past! What on earth are you thinking about, Polly Kenworthy? Is it your time of the month, or are you so head-in-the-clouds over your young man that you can’t think straight? But I’m glad you have come, Meg Blundell. Mrs John could do with some help. My, but I remember when there was a cook and kitchenmaid here, and two housemaids and a parlour maid as well as myself in the nursery. Things have changed since that man Hitler started the war! When it’s all over, I hope they hang him! Maybe, if we hadn’t been so gentlemanly with the Germans at the end of the last war things might have been very different. I shall never forgive the Kaiser for what happened to John. Such a good child; such a gentle young man. It wasn’t right to make a soldier of him, send him to the trenches!’

Shuddering, she had closed her eyes and hugged her cardigan round her, setting her chair rocking in agitation.

‘Oh, thump!’ Polly had gasped. ‘She’s pulled up the drawbridge again!’

For a moment the old woman sat, shoulders hunched. Then she’d opened her eyes, straightened her back and smiled fondly.

‘Off you go then, whilst I drink my tea! Take your little friend with you, Polly dear, and don’t forget to tell her nanny you are going out to play. And remember your bonnets!’

‘Wouldn’t you know it?’ Meg had whispered. ‘Back to square one again! Never mind! Third time lucky. Next time she sees me she might just remember I’m Meg! And don’t look so miserable. Give and take, eh? After all, the old girl doesn’t know she’s doing it!’

‘I’m not so sure,’ Polly had flung as they closed the door behind them. ‘Sure, I mean, that she doesn’t know she’s doing it!’

‘But you said, and your mother too, that you –’

‘That we have to humour her because she doesn’t know where she is or what time of the day it is, most times? Well, sometimes I’m not convinced! Sometimes I think she does know what she’s doing!’

‘But your mother said her mind has gone; that mostly she had shut the world out.’

‘Yes, but is she as senile as she’d have us believe, Meg? Sometimes I think it’s all an act and that she’s putting on Mummy’s good nature so she can still have people running after her like it was the old days! She’s got Mummy fooled and even I accept it, most of the time! But like you saw, she can be as bright as a button one minute, then just go back into her other world as the mood suits her!’ Her eyes had filled with tears and she’d shaken her head impatiently. ‘Oh, don’t take any notice of me! I’m in one of my miserable moods, I suppose, because there wasn’t a letter from Davie this morning! I always get fratchy if he doesn’t write and do peevish things like taking it out on Nanny – who really is senile!’

‘Like you said, Polly girl – sixpence short of a shilling. She can’t help it, I suppose, for wanting to put the clock back. I often wished I could have done the same after Ma died; wished I’d made her go to that sanatorium, charity ward or not!’

‘Meg! Please don’t upset yourself. We’re both of us getting in a tizzy, wishing we’d done something – or hadn’t done or said something. I shouldn’t have said things about Nanny, who can’t help being –’

‘Nutty as a fruitcake!’ Meg had sucked in a deep breath then forced her lips into a smile. ‘Cheer up, queen! There’ll be two letters tomorrow! There might even be a phone call tonight!’

‘Yes. And even if there isn’t, at least I’m young and fit and not in pain like Gran.’

‘Or daft as a brush like Nanny Boag. Now let’s get our tea. Then I think I’ll give the outside steps a good scrub!’

Stone steps leading to the thick, nail-studded door, worn into hollows by generations of Kenworthy feet. Safe and enduring, those steps, and four hundred years old.

Now, as she drank her tea, Meg wondered how many times Dolly Blundell had scrubbed them. It was a sobering thought.

Five

The first few days in June, Meg was to consider as the end of her fortnight’s probabion drew close, had been interesting, especially with regard to Nanny Boag. Indeed, the more she thought about it, the more sure Meg became that her uneasiness seemed justified.

Take Sunday, for instance. Meg had insisted that collection of the Sunday papers would henceforth be her responsibility.

‘Fair’s fair, Polly. After all, you collect the milk.’

Daily papers were delivered as an act of kindness by Mrs Potter, together with the letters. Sunday papers, however, were left for collection in an outhouse at the back of the post office because, like anyone else, the postmistress needed a day off.

‘Will I take the papers upstairs, Mrs John?’ Meg asked on her return.

‘Later, perhaps. Think I’ll take a quick look at them myself first. After all, it is Sunday,’ she added almost apologetically.

‘OK by me.’ Polly Kenworthy hardly ever read newspapers; did not want to know that the war was not going as well for the Allies as it might. Nor did she want to see the obituary columns and lists of the names of men who were missing or believed killed in action. True, Davie wasn’t in action, but every one of those men who would never come home could have been the soldier she loved, and it hurt her to think that some other unknown woman had received one of the dreaded telegrams. Regretting.

‘Want porridge, Meg, or just an egg?’

Meg had been about to opt for an egg, when, ‘Oh, no! Would you believe it?’ Mary Kenworthy gasped. ‘I mean, it’s bad enough doing a thing like that, but to announce it on a Sunday when all the shops are shut so no one can buy in a few things is just – well – sneaky! Coupons for clothes! It just won’t work!’

‘Let me see!’ Polly shook open the second paper. It consisted of only four pages, so news of the rationing of clothes and footwear was not hard to find.

‘Well! If that isn’t just the last straw! No more luxury goods to be made and everything else to be manufactured under the utility mark. Shoddy, I shouldn’t wonder. And fourteen coupons must be given up for a winter coat, it says, and five for a pair of shoes! What on earth are They thinking about? How can anyone last for a year on sixty-six clothing coupons.’

‘If we’re to have utility clothes they’re bound to be cheap,’ Meg hesitated. ‘At least more people will be able to afford them – poor people, I mean …’

‘But no more luxury goods nor even wedding dresses!’ Polly pouted. ‘And I did so want a long white dress for my wedding! By the time Davie and me get around to it, though, they’ll be a thing of the past!’

‘Then why don’t you go to the shops tomorrow, good and early?’ Meg soothed. ‘Grab one while you can.’

‘But how, when I don’t have any clothing coupons? They haven’t given them out yet, and it doesn’t say when they will!’

Her eyes filled with tears, and she blew her nose noisily.

‘Hush, Polly. It isn’t the end of the world!’ There was a hint of admonition in Mary Kenworthy’s voice. ‘If you read what it says, you can give up your margarine coupons instead – till the proper ones are issued.’

‘But how can anyone do that? We need the margarine to eat! What a stupid idea!’

‘So how about waiting like we’ll all have to do? Then the minute you get your hands on the coupons you can nip off to town and hunt down a wedding dress – though how many coupons you’ll have to give up to get one, heaven only knows! There’s a lot of material in a wedding dress,’ Meg cautioned. ‘It seems that a dress is going to take seven coupons, but I don’t think it applies to long wedding dresses.’

‘I think what Meg says makes sense.’ Mary Kenworthy stared pointedly over the top of her reading glasses. ‘And if the worst comes to the worst, do you have to have a white dress?’

‘But every bride has one! It wouldn’t be like a wedding without one!’

‘Then it would seem to me, Polly, that you are more in love with the idea of walking down the aisle in white than you are with Davie!’

‘Mummy!’

With a scraping of chair legs Polly flung from the table, to run sobbing across the courtyard.

‘I’d better go –’

‘No, Meg. Leave her. If she loves Davie as much as I’m sure she does, then she’ll see how unimportant it is. Come to think of it, there’ll be a lot of shattered dreams, this morning …’

Polly returned ten minutes later, tears still wet on her cheeks, her expression contrite.

‘I’m sorry – I truly am. Forgive me? I acted like a spoiled brat. As if it matters what I wear! When I thought about it, I realized that if Davie turned up tomorrow on a week’s embarkation leave, I’d marry him in my best cotton frock and Sunday hat!’

‘You’d marry him, girl, in an old sack with a pan on yer ’ead,’ Meg grinned.

‘Yes, I would. It isn’t what you wear at a wedding, but how you say the words.’

‘And never forget, darling girl, that I know what it is like to have the man you love away at war. So don’t worry, you will wear white when you marry Davie – how ever many clothing coupons it takes. I promise.’

‘That’s settled, then,’ Meg beamed. ‘And we’d better listen to all the news broadcasts so we won’t miss bein’ told how we get the dratted coupons. And when we do, you can be off to the shops for a weddin’ dress – if they haven’t all disappeared under the counter, that is! An’ you must go with her, Mrs John. I’m not taking no for an answer. No excuses. I’m here now, and a day out at the shops will do you both good – even if there won’t be a lot to buy. Now what do you say to that, eh?’

‘I’d say,’ Polly smiled, tears gone, ‘that if I’d been lucky enough to have a sister – well, I wish she’d have been exactly like you!’

Indeed, it had been the matter of the unfairness of clothes rationing that gave strength to Meg’s suspicions about the true state of Nanny Boag’s mind the next day.

‘Awful, isn’t it, Nanny, and Polly so wantin’ a white dress and white shoes and some pretty nighties and things for when she gets married?’

‘That, I suggest, is Polly’s worry and not yours! For my own part, I have worked it out that I can manage quite well for the rest of my days on what is in my wardrobe and drawers. I don’t go out, so I won’t need new shoes nor a winter coat – that’s nineteen coupons saved already,’ she smiled smugly. ‘And I have enough knitting wool put by for the odd cardigan and slippers. Oh no, clothes rationing won’t worry me at all!’

‘Then you can give them nineteen coupons to Polly! If she can’t get a proper weddin’ dress she’ll have to have one made for her. At two coupons for a yard of white satin, that would be nine and a half yards – more than enough!’

‘Them nineteen coupons? Don’t you mean those nineteen coupons? You speak so badly, child. And if you have come to play with Polly, then she’ll be at church with the family, so I suggest you collect your nanny from the kitchen and go back to where you came from!’

‘Polly isn’t at church. You know they went yesterday – Sunday.’

‘Don’t argue! What Nanny says in the nursery is never to be contradicted. Now be off with you, little girl!’

Strewth! At it again! Meg closed the door behind her. When something didn’t please her, that one could change from sane to silly at the drop of a hat!

And wasn’t that it? Nanny had read about clothing coupons in the paper; was even able to calculate how many she would be saving. Yet the moment it was suggested she give some to Polly, the daft look had come back on her face and she was in another world again.

Yet the truth was as plain as the nose on your face, Meg thought triumphantly as everything clicked into place. Nanny Boag was as sane as most folk, given her age, and it was only when something didn’t suit her did she start her gaga act! She didn’t need her coupons, but no one else was getting their hands on them, so pull down the shutters and act stupid!

‘Gotcher, you crafty old biddy!’ Meg gloated. That one was as normal and nimble as need be, all things considered, but she’d got the Kenworthys fooled! From now on, though, she would have her work cut out pulling the wool over Margaret Mary Blundell’s eyes!

Though something Nanny had said was right, Meg sighed. No denying it: she didn’t speak properly! She got her thems and thoses wrong, and dropped aitches and spoke with a thick Liverpool accent – which was all right for Liverpool where most people she knew spoke the same and understood each other perfectly well, but it wasn’t right for Candlefold. She must ask Polly to help her. It was the only way she would ever learn to talk proper like Ma!

The second incident to give strength to Meg’s suspicions was two days later when the death of Kaiser Wilhelm II was reported, taking only four lines in the daily paper, which was all he deserved, come to think of it. She had been on her way to collect Mrs Kenworthy’s breakfast tray when dreadful wailing came to her from the floor above.

‘Oh, my goodness!’ Meg had taken the narrow nursery stairs two at a time to stop, breathless, outside the open door.

‘And thank God you are dead, you pig! It was you caused my John to be wounded! If you hadn’t started that war he’d be alive today! You should have died in those filthy trenches and not lived another twenty years! But I hope you died in pain, you evil bastard, and I wish I’d been there to see it! I’d have stood and cheered!’

‘Nanny! What’s to do?’ Meg pushed the door wider. ‘You’ll do yourself an upset, carryin’ on like that!’

‘Like what?’ The old women turned, eyes wide, lips relaxed in a smile, looking so cherubic that it was hardly possible to believe the venom in her words, nor the swearing either.

‘The Kaiser, I mean. Him bein’ dead.’

‘Dead, is he? Well, fancy that, now. I once heard it said he had a funny left arm – withered, you know. Must have been a great trial to him!’

‘It must have.’ Yet that same Kaiser with whom Nanny now sympathized had, only seconds ago, been loudly cursed by that apple-cheeked, smiling old lady! ‘Is there anything I can get you, Nanny?’ she said quietly.

‘No, thank you. Pop off and play. I’ll ring for one of the maids if I want anything.’

She had beamed again, the two-faced old cat, Meg fumed; changed from her cursing and swearing to a soft-voiced, gentle old woman and all because she had realized she might have been heard!

My, but she was going to take some watching, though how she was going to convince Mrs John and Polly about Nanny’s deceiving ways Meg sighed, was altogether another matter!

Meg had brushed the worn stone floor of the entrance hall and was dusting the panelling when Mary Kenworthy said, ‘Do you wonder as I do, Meg, how many people have dusted and polished and touched those panels?’

‘Thousands, I reckon. I like touching them. Silly, isn’t it, liking the feel of wood under your fingertips …’

‘Not at all. I feel the same way myself. And be sure that the long-ago woodcarver would be pleased to hear you say it.’

‘How long ago?’

‘About five hundred years, I would say. It was the third Kenworthy who had this hall panelled – to proclaim his growing wealth, I suppose. When the Lancastrians ruled England, it would be. Y’know,’ she smiled, ‘hand-me-down talk has it that Richard Kenworthy – he was known as Dickon – wanted his great hall embellished with linenfold carving, but the artisan who did it didn’t please Master Dickon. It’s said that he told the woodcarver it looked more like drips of tallow down the side of a candle and that he would be the laughing stock of the Riding, with such a shoddy job! Whereupon the crafty carver told him that he would be the envy of all, being the first gentleman to benefit from the new candlefold panelling. And Dickon believed him, and paid him well for his pains. I think that is how the house got its name.’

‘You’re lucky, Mrs John – bein’ able to tell family jokes about all them – those – years ago. Don’t you feel proud – special, sort of?’

‘I’m not a Kenworthy, Meg, though I married into it and helped carry on the line and the Kenworthy pride too. And Polly – who is adopted as you will know – is the most devout Kenworthy of us all!’

‘It must be something about this place,’ Meg said softly. ‘It takes you over.’

‘So you like being with us, Meg? Your two weeks are almost up. Are you going to stay?’

‘Are you askin’?’ Meg smiled.

‘I most certainly am!’

‘Then if it’s all right with you, Mrs John, I’m stoppin’.’ She held out her hand. ‘And I hope I give satisfaction, I’m sure.’

‘I know you will. I’ve got used to having you around. But you haven’t taken the time off due to you. Why don’t you go home for a couple of days? There must be things you need to see to?’

‘We-e-ll, I’ll have to get my new address put on my ration book and identity card. And there’s the house, an’ all. I’ll have to ask next door to keep an eye on it; send on any letters that come.’

Letters. From Kip. They might be there, waiting for her. Yet she had hardly thought about him, so charmed had she been with her new life! Nor had she sent him so much as a picture postcard of Nether Barton, which, despite the shortage of such things, could still be bought at the pre-war price of tuppence at the post office.

‘Then shall we say you are on a forty-eight-hour pass, as Mark would call it. Will that suit, Meg?’

‘It’ll suit very nicely indeed.’

A pound a week, and all this? Oh my word yes, it would suit!

Meg stripped her bed of sheets and pillowcases, folding them neatly, ready to be taken to the wash house for Mrs Seed, who always came Thursdays. Before her marriage she had worked at Candlefold as a housemaid and now came each week to see to the laundry and, on Friday mornings, to do the ironing. It seemed to Meg that Mrs Seed was another who had come under the spell of this house, and still looked on it as a part of her way of life.

Mr Potter – you always called him Mister – was exactly the same, caring for the garden as if it were his own, he having arrived there as an apprentice thirty years ago and not inclined to go elsewhere, in spite of tempting offers. Ma had been the same, loyal to it in memory, a place never to be forgotten. And now her daughter was equally besotted. Even to think of visiting Tippet’s Yard did not please her as it should, for wasn’t Candleford to be her home now? But she was looking forward to seeing Nell and Tommy again; telling them about her new life and what it was really like living deep in the countryside. If she missed anything about Liverpool, she admitted, it was the two people who shared the shut-away little yard with her.

But first to catch the Preston bus. A good three hours it would take her with all the chopping and changing, and each mile taking her back to a place she would really rather not be. Yet Nell and Tommy deserved to be told about her good fortune, because up until now they had shared her troubles – them, and Kip.

Kip Lewis. She wished she could love him as Polly loved Davie, but she wanted to be really in love – which girl didn’t? – wanted to know the highs and lows of it and the needing and the giving. She would accept, even, the absolute misery when a letter did not arrive and the brief hours spent together to balance out weeks of separation. If she loved as Polly loved, that was. If it happened to her as suddenly and completely as it had happened to Polly, and her stomach went boing! as Polly’s had done, then she would be glad to be in love for ever.

And until it happened she must wait, because couldn’t she next month, next week, tomorrow even, turn a corner and see him there and know he was the one? She thought again of Kip, and sadness took her.

‘I’m sorry, Kip, that it can’t be you …’

At Preston station she was able to buy a return ticket to Liverpool, which meant that at least the trains were back on the lines. But Liverpool, when she arrived there, seemed still to be reeling from the vicious bombing. The stink of blitzkrieg still hung on the air, a dusty, musty smell mingling with the acrid odour of burned timber and the stench of escaped sewage.

Yet she saw no danger signs as the bus made towards Scotland Road; at least ruptured gas and water mains seemed to have been taken care of, and bombs that had lain there unexploded and dangerous. Gangs still shifted rubble, though, and shovelled and heaved the heart of what had once been a proud seaport onto the backs of lorries.

Where would they take all the debris? Would it be dumped in bomb craters or tipped into the Mersey? Did anyone give a damn? Meg thought dully, because inside her she had the grace to care; not because it was Liverpool and people’s homes and jobs and way of life, but because there were places, not so very far away, that knew nothing of destruction and death; places surrounded by fields and trees and flowers, and where old, old stones stood untouched by time or destruction, would go on for six hundred years more. Could she ever, during those terror-filled nights, have thought such peace existed? And wasn’t she the lucky one to have left the nightmare behind her?

She gazed fixedly at her hands because she did not want to look out on the destruction either side of her and because she felt guilty it was no longer her concern. She lived in the country now; must learn to forget Scotland Road and Lyra Street and Tippet’s Yard!

Yet despite her resolve, the feeling of unease was still with her when she walked beneath the low alleyway and stood to gaze into the airless little court, taking in the wash house, the lavatories and three little houses packed together as if clinging for support. Nor did the feeling leave her when her eyes lit on her neighbour, sitting on a wooden chair, arms folded, eyes closed, outside number 2.

‘Hi there, Nell!’

The head jerked up and, all at once wide-eyed, Nell Shaw straightened her shoulders and ran her tongue round her lips.

‘Well, if it isn’t Meg Blundell, come home from the wilds and the kettle not on! Come here, girl, and let’s be lookin’ at you. My, but you look as if you’ve been on yer ’olidays!’

Her cheeks had filled out and pinked, Nell thought; her eyes shone, her hair too. Real bonny, she looked. No, by the heck, two weeks in the country had turned her into a little beauty.

‘I have been – leastways, it seems like it. Compared to this place, it’s another world. You wouldn’t believe it!’

‘So come inside and try tellin’ me whilst I’m brewing up.’

‘These are for you.’ Meg laid the carefully carried sheaf of flowers on the kitchen table.

‘Lord help us, you shouldn’t have! What did they cost you, and how many vases do you think I’ve got, girl?’

‘They cost nuthink. I got them from the garden of the brick house. But you’ll never guess what I’ve got in me bag. Eggs! Fresh, an’ all. Two each for you and Tommy. Polly sent them and, oh, there’s so much to tell you, Nell!’

‘So first things first. Are you stoppin’?’

‘At Tippet’s? No. I’m going back on Saturday. Just came to see you both and sort out a few things, then I’m off back. Mrs John wants me to stop and I want to, Nell. ’Fraid I haven’t brought any food with me, but I’ll nip out and buy a loaf, and there’s jam in the cupboard. And tonight I’ll go to the chippy and treat us all to a fish supper.’

‘Then you’ll have to be in the queue good and early, girl – half an hour before they open. But let’s have your news, though I’m sorry you are off back there. Me an’ Tommy have missed you. Met a young man, have you?’

‘Heck, no! There’s only Mr Potter, who’s the gardener, and Mr Armitage at Home Farm, and they’re old. Polly is engaged, though – to Davie, who’s in the Service Corps – lorries and transports and things – and Polly’s brother is in the same regiment. And, would you believe it, Polly is adopted and it doesn’t bother her one bit! But I’ll tell you all about it right from the start, eh?’ She plopped a saccharin tablet into her cup and watched it rise fizzing to the top of her tea.

‘By the way, you didn’t stop your milk, so I took it. That all right, Meg? I paid for it.’

‘Then don’t cancel it. No need for the milkie to know I’m away. They’ve got their own cow at Candlefold, so they don’t need my milk coupons. You’re welcome to my ration, Nell. An’ I hope you took my coal, an’ all – get a bit stocked up for the winter.’

And Nell said of course she had, since Meg had told her to, then lit a cigarette, glad that Doll’s girl was back, if only for a little time.

‘Tell me, Meg, before you start, do they know who you are? Did you tell them you was born there?’

‘No, and I won’t till I’m good and ready, though the old lady remembered Ma. Said they’d once had a housemaid called Dorothy Blundell, but I told her it was a common enough name around Liverpool and she hasn’t mentioned it since. But let me tell you …’

And the words tumbled breathlessly out, about the old part of the house, and the newer brick part that They had taken over, though no one quite knew why. And how the garden had got overgrown so you wouldn’t recognize it from Ma’s photo, and how she had nipped through the hedge and gathered the flowers she had brought with her; told how Polly was a love and treated her like an equal; how they all did, except batty old Nanny who lived in another world, when it suited her. And about sunrises and sunsets and that it hadn’t rained one day since she had been there, and feeding hens and running up and down the stone stairs and Mrs John being grateful for another pair of hands to help out with the old ladies.

‘Polly works almost every day in the kitchen garden. They send vegetables an’ things to the local shops. And next time I come, there’ll be strawberries ripe, I shouldn’t wonder, and I’ll be able to bring you some. And there’ll be raspberries and plums and apples, and Mr Armitage told me that if I let him know next time I’m over, he’ll make sure I have a rabbit to bring with me.’

She talked on, eyes shining, about how right Ma had been about Candlefold, and how it was a place hidden from the war; a place where there was milk to spare and vegetables so fresh you wouldn’t believe it; talked on and on till Nell took a hand.

‘Written to Kip, have you, since you’ve been away?’ she interrupted, eyes narrowed.

‘Kip? Well – no, Nell. But I’ve been so busy there didn’t seem time. I’ve brought a postcard with me, though, of the village. I’ll send him that.’

‘There’s a letter with a New Zealand stamp on it behind your clock, and a parcel I put in the pantry. Arrived yesterday, so mind you write and thank him for it.’ She fixed Meg with a no-nonsense stare. ‘What kind of a way is that to treat your young man!’

‘He isn’t my young man, Nell; not my steady. We don’t have an understandin’. You know we don’t!’

‘Then more’s the pity. Kip Lewis is as good a lad as you’re likely to meet, and think on that I’ve told you so!’

‘I know he’s decent and I’m not leading him on, honest I’m not. I’m fond of him, though, and grateful for what he sends – and I’ll not need to go to the chippy now. I’ll open the parcel and we’ll all have a slap-up meal tonight!’

‘So is that all he means to you – the food he sends?’

‘I said I was fond of him, Nell, but I’m not rushing into anything. You said men are out for the main chance – I’m living proof of it, aren’t I? Have there been any more raids, by the way?’ Best talk of other things.

‘No, thanks be.’ She took Meg’s keys from the sideboard. ‘Now off you go and open the windows and get the house aired, and see that the parcel’s all right and that nothing’s leaked. And give Tommy a knock on your way out. Tell him there’s tea left in the pot.’

‘She looks well on it,’ Tommy said. ‘The fresh air suits the girl.’

‘Aye. And just like her mother, God rest her, used to be! Was always goin’ on about that place, yet we both know what happened to her in the end! Just let’s hope it doesn’t happen to her daughter! And Meg doesn’t know I’ve told you about – well – the way it was, and what was in Doll’s case. Keep it to yourself, don’t forget!’

‘I will. But why should it happen to Meg?’ Tommy frowned. ‘History doesn’t repeat itself, don’t they say?’

‘You’re thinking about lightning not striking twice in the same place, Tommy Todd! History does repeat itself, or why has bluddy Hitler started another war?’

‘Give the girl credit! She knows right from wrong!’

‘So did her mother, and much good it did her! And it isn’t Meg I don’t trust, it’s all them fellers, out for what they can get ’cause there’s a war on! But I suppose she’ll have to make her own mistakes. Only way she’ll learn, come to think of it!’

‘So who says Meg’s going to end up in trouble? A nasty tongue you’ve got at times, Nell Shaw!’

So Nell said if that was what he thought she wouldn’t say another word on the subject; said it indignantly, then closed her mouth into a tight round button and glared across the table, narrow-eyed.

‘Not one more word!’ she hissed.

Kip’s letter bore no address, so he was able to write, without risking the censor’s scissors, that by the time Meg got it he would have reached you-know-where and was looking forward to a few days ashore.… And by the way. I’ll be posting you a parcel. Fingers crossed that it won’t go to the bottom.

The carefully packed parcel had indeed arrived, Meg thought uneasily, and before she went back to Candlefold she must write him a long chatty letter, post it at once so there was a chance it would be waiting at Panama on the way home. But first she took the postcard, a pretty view of Nether Barton’s only street, showing the post office, the pub and the church next to it, and a row of cottages. On the back she wrote her new address, that all was well and that a letter followed. Then she took it at once to the post office, asking for an airmail sticker and a sixpenny stamp. ‘There now!’ Feeling a little less guilty, she slid it into the pillar box.

‘Just been to post one to Kip,’ she said to Nell on her return. ‘Thought you’d like to know. And I’ll send him another before I go back. There’s a tin of meat in the parcel; would you and Tommy like to come to supper tonight? And Kip sent these for you.’

As if it were a peace offering, she passed a packet of cigarettes to the older woman.

‘Ar. Tell him thanks a lot when you write back. He’s a good lad, Meg, and you’ll have to go a long way to find better. But it’s none of my business and you’re old enough to know your own mind. And yes, ta, I’ll come to supper.’

The smile was back on Nell’s face. All was well again in Tippet’s Yard.

The house swept and aired, Meg made for the Ministry of Food office in Scotland Road. Its windows were still boarded up, the inside gloomy.

‘Change of address, please.’ When her turn came, Meg offered her ration book and identity card. ‘And where do I go for my clothing coupons?’

‘Board of Trade office, four doors down.’ The overworked clerk had no time to chat.

‘Thanks.’ Meg felt relief that her Tippet’s Yard address was now secret beneath a white sticky label; that another part of her past had been officially hidden. Half an hour later her identity card had been changed and Clothing coupons issued written on the front cover of her ration book, together with a Board of Trade stamp and a scribbled initial.

By the time she had queued for potatoes and bought a cabbage Mr Potter would have been ashamed to offer, it was time to put the kettle on. Kip’s parcel had included a packet of tea, and tomorrow she really would write a letter, telling him about Polly and Mrs John, and how she was learning the names of flowers and to recognize a thrush and a blackbird, and that soon she would be helping with the fruit picking.

But first she would prepare supper; peel potatoes and do what she could with the sickly cabbage. And since Kip had sent biscuits – real, pre-war chocolate biscuits the likes of which were only a memory now – she would arrange them daintily on a plate instead of a pudding. Such a treat they would be, and she, Nell and Tommy would eat the lot and toast the sender’s health in a cup of strong Billy tea from Australia!

Meg wished she could be in love with Kip – really in love – but he wasn’t the one and she hoped he hadn’t wasted his money on a ring when he got to Sydney, because that was what it would be. A waste.

‘Sorry, Kip,’ she whispered, over the potatoes. ‘Take care of yourself, eh?’

As the train pulled shuddering and heaving out of the station, Meg could feel only relief at leaving Liverpool behind her. Yet she still felt guilty at being so lucky when most other Liverpool folk, many of whom still had family missing, even yet, had no choice but to remain amongst the devastation. And guilty about the killing and injuries, and about the baby covered with rubble dust. She would never forget the little one, nor forgive either. She felt guilty, too, about Kip, who sent her letters and food parcels, and who would hope for letters from her at ports of call.

Mind, she had written the letter, telling him about her new job and her bedroom window that looked out onto such a view that it brought tears to her eyes; told him about the hens and the Jersey cow, and that she thought about him often and remembered him every night in her prayers, both of which were downright lies.

Polly prayed every night for Davie and Mark and for all servicemen and women – ours, of course – and a speedy end to the war. Took a bit of understanding, come to think of it, since German women would be praying for much the same thing, so if there really was a God, how did He know which side to listen to? Us, or them? Tossed a penny, did He?

They were nearing the outskirts of Liverpool now, and Meg knew they were passing through Aintree, even though station names had been removed; part of a grand scheme to bewilder invading parachutists by not providing any clues as to where they had dropped!

Aintree, where the most famous horserace in the world was run, and rich men in top hats, with their wives dressed up to the nines, came from all over the world with their horses and jockeys and grooms, and had a real good time afterwards at the luxurious Adelphi Hotel.

She pulled her thoughts back to Kip, because he was the one she felt most guilty about. Mind, she hadn’t asked for the parcels he’d sent, though she had been glad enough to get them. Nor was it her fault that he liked her a lot whilst she could only feel sisterly affection. It made her think of Amy, Kip’s sister who lived in Lyra Street. Meg had had the good sense to visit her so she was able to tell Kip he must not worry about her and her children, and that there had been no more bombing.

Thank you for the parcel. Nell and Tommy came to supper to share my luck and have a real tuck in, she had written, and Nell says thanks a lot for the ciggies and sends her best regards, as does Tommy.

Take care of yourself. She had ended the letter tongue in cheek: I think about you every night before I go to sleep. With love and kisses …

She had placed a lipsticky kiss beside her name, thinking that love and kisses was the least she could do for a parcel not only containing food, but a tablet of soap, a jar of cold cream and a carefully wrapped bottle of shampoo, all of which were in very short supply and could only be got by being in the right place at the right time, then standing in a queue!

Conscience almost cleared, she had propped the airmail envelope beside the mantel clock, then set the kettle to boil for hot water in which to wash. She missed the bathroom at Candlefold, but would make up for the all-over wash by using the sweet-smelling soap. She had sniffed it greedily, for toilet soap – when you were lucky enough to get it – had long ago ceased to be scented. It made her think enviously of a country where the sun almost always shone, where there were warm beaches and scented soap in the shops and no blackout.

And oh, damn the war and the stupid men who had let it happen again! And damn Hitler, who was probably sniggering into his champagne, knowing the British still expected to be invaded, and only he knowing exactly when it would be! It didn’t bear thinking about, so she closed her eyes and pushed the war from her mind.

And thought about Candlefold instead, just two hours away.

Six

She was back, and never before had two days taken so long to run. Meg blinked up into the sky, breathing deeply, because even the air here was special; golden-coloured and scented with green things growing, and hay and honeysuckle.

She smiled at Mrs Potter, who always peeked through the post office window whenever a bus arrived, checking in those she knew, making a mental note of those she did not, and who, two weeks ago, had drawn the attention of a stranger to a printed postcard.

‘Candlefold,’ Meg whispered, lips hardly moving. ‘Where I live; where I was born; where I am meant to be.’ And where she would stay till Fate – or the Ministry of Labour and National Service – decided differently.

At the stile she stood quite still, listening to the safe stillness: a bird singing, leaves rustling green above her. Even the lambs were still, laying close to the ewes who stared steadily ahead, mouths rotating cud, like the blank-faced tarts who stood on every street corner the length of Lime Street, chewing gum.

But Lime Street was a long way away and in just a few more seconds she would see the old house, the worn stone steps, the thick, squat door and the pump trough. In just a few more seconds, she would be home.

‘You’re back!’ Mary Kenworthy smiled. ‘And just as I was thinking I’d have to go all the way to the garden to tell Polly that lunch is ready!’

‘What’s to do with that thing, then?’ Meg nodded in the direction of the bell that hung outside the door.

‘They’re both asleep, upstairs – thought we’d get our lunch before they’re awake.’ She broke two more eggs into the bowl. ‘Omelette and salad and stewed apples,’ she answered the question in Meg’s eyes. ‘Be a love, and tell Polly it’s on the table in three minutes, will you?’

The walk to the kitchen garden took Meg across the courtyard, beneath the far arch, past the henrun and across the drying green to the tall, narrow gate in the eight-feet-high wall. Mr Potter’s little kingdom where the war was shut out every morning at eight o’clock sharp and not confronted again until work was over for the day and the gate clanged shut behind him.

Meg saw Polly on her knees beside the strawberry bed and whistled through her fingers.

‘Hey! Ready in three minutes!’ she called, then ran down the path, delight at her heels. ‘What are you doing?’ Everything that happened at Candlefold delighted her.

‘Strawing up,’ Polly grinned, linking her arm in Meg’s. ‘The berries are starting to swell so we put straw beneath them to keep them clean and to keep the slugs away. Then when we’ve done that we’ll net them over, and that’ll take care of the thieving blackbirds too. But I’m so glad you are home. Yesterday there wasn’t a letter. I felt so miserable I got to wondering what else could go wrong, and you not coming back was high on the list. But this morning –’

‘This morning there were two letters and I am back. And if you thought I wouldn’t be, then you’re dafter than Nanny Boag – who is asleep, by the way!’

Home again, and omelettes for lunch, stewed apples for pudding, and the sky high and blue and bright. Life was all at once so good that it almost took her breath away.

‘Pull out any weeds, and tuck the straw around the roots,’ Polly instructed later that afternoon, initiating Meg into the mysteries of Mr Potter’s garden.

‘I don’t know which is weeds and which isn’t …’

‘Anything that isn’t a strawberry plant, just yank it out before you shove the straw in. We’ll be having strawberries and cream in two or three weeks.’

‘Creeeeeam!’ Wasn’t cream illegal, Meg demanded.

‘We-e-ll, yes, but once every Preston Guild, Mummy pours the morning milk into a large bowl and skims off the cream that rises to the top. It’s illegal to sell it in the shops, but nobody can stop you skimming your own milk. And, like I said, she doesn’t do it often. Davie and Mark are due leave at the end of June, so I hope there’ll be plenty of sun to ripen the berries. When that happens, we have to be up good and early to do the picking and have them ready for the van that calls. I often think how pleased some lady will be to get some – even though she probably won’t have sugar to spare to sprinkle on them.’

‘Nor cream,’ Meg grinned. ‘And I wonder how long she’ll have to queue for them, an’ all. That’s when your Davie will be on leave, then – three weeks from now?’

‘Twenty days. I’ve started crossing them off on my calendar. Mind, the bods in the armed forces are always told that leave is a privilege and not their due, but most times nothing happens to stop it.’ She crossed her fingers. ‘We’re having two days here, then spending the rest of his leave with his parents. They live a few miles from Oxford where Davie ought by rights to be, studying engineering. Oh, damn this war!’

‘What d’you mean! It was because of the war youse two met!’

‘Mm. That Davie met Mark and Mark brought him home for a weekend. Funny, isn’t it?’

‘Nah! Just meant to be.’ Meg removed a weed then manoeuvred straw beneath the berry plant. ‘Ma always said that what was to be would be; that the minute you are born there’s this feller who knows what’ll happen to you an’ he writes it all down. Your Book of Life, it’s called, and there’s no gettin’ away from it.’

‘And you believe that, Meg?’

‘Makes as much sense as anythink else.’

‘More sense than believing in God?’

‘’Fraid I’m not a God person. I mean – what about when Ma was bad and I’d believed, and prayed for her to live? Well, where would I be now, eh? He’d have let me down stinkin’, wouldn’t He?’

‘We don’t always get everything we want.’

‘Then why bother?’

‘Meg, you really don’t believe, do you?’

‘Reckon not. Ma didn’t either; only in the Book of Life thing.’

‘But what about Christmas and Easter?’

‘We never bothered. Christmas trees and Easter eggs cost money, she said, an’ it was all a big con by shopkeepers to get cash out of you, and by the Church, so you’d go and put money on the plate. All down to pounds, shillin’s and pence!’

‘So you don’t say your prayers or go to church?’ Polly whispered. ‘Nor ask God to take care of your young man?’

‘Told you, I haven’t got a young man. Kip’s only a friend.’

‘He sent you shampoo and scented soap you told us at lunchtime!’

‘A friend,’ Meg said firmly. ‘And we’d better stop nattering and get on with this strawing, or Mr Potter isn’t goin’ to let me work in the garden again!’ And she liked working in Mr Potter’s garden. It was better than running upstairs every time Nanny rang her bell. Anything was better than being near the old biddy, who’d been in a right mood, earlier on.

‘You’re back,’ she had grumbled. ‘I thought you’d gone, Meg Blundell!’

A fine way to greet someone you hadn’t seen for two days and who’d brought up your lunch, an’ all!

‘Bad penny, that’s me!’ she’d said saucily. ‘And if you aren’t hungry I’ll take this tray downstairs again!’ She was starting the way she meant to go on, turning away to show she meant what she said! And the old girl had jumped to her feet like a two-year-old and grabbed hold of her lunch with a look like thunder on her face.

‘Give it to me, girl, and get out! And never, ever, give me backchat again! Remember your place here and that a word from me will get you dismissed instantly, and without a reference too!’

So Meg had got out of the nursery and drew in her breath and held it all the way down two flights of stairs and into the courtyard.

‘Ten!’ she’d gasped, thankful she had kept a hold on her temper, rubbing her hands on the roughness of the pump trough, remembering Ma, who knew all about Nanny Boag too. But maybe when Mark had been little, Nanny had been a nicer person, or why did Mrs John put up with her?

And so, remembering how desperately she wanted to stay at Candlefold, she had determined never again to let the old woman upset her, and no matter how much she might long to give her a piece of her mind, she would do as Polly said she should: turn her back, and walk away!

She tugged fiercely on an offending weed and wished with all her heart it could have been Nanny Boag’s nose!

Days were ticked off on Polly’s calendar; the strawberries swelled and Mr Armitage had thrown caution out of the window and taken a scythe to the grass on the brick house lawns because it was eighteen inches high and as good a crop of hay as he had seen this year. And wasn’t every forkful of hay needed for the war effort? And whose hay was it, anyway?

‘Now you’re supposed to leave that grass three clear Sundays,’ he told Meg, who had watched the sweeping strokes of his arm with fascination. ‘And it’s got to be turned every day so it’ll dry. Any good with a hayfork, young Meg?’

She had been obliged to admit she was not, but was very willing to learn if he would show her how. And so haymaking became another delight, with she and Polly turning an acre of grass twice a day. At first, her arms ached with the effort, then she began to look forward to their stealthy visits to the brick house lawns, each time wondering if they would be caught by the faceless ones on one of their visits.

‘So if They catch us at it, what can They do?’ Meg reasoned. ‘I mean – They only requisitioned the house, now, didn’t they? Surely nobody’s goin’ to make a fuss over a bit of grass?’

‘An acre of hay, actually. And I think that requisition covered the whole shebang, with the exception of the kitchen garden, Meg. But it’s drying beautifully. I reckon we’ll get it cocked and carted away before anyone from London finds out. Armitage says it’s good hay, and nice and herby; says a bit of neglect has done it the power of good, but don’t repeat that to Mr Potter, will you?’

‘I won’t. And had you thought, Polly, that by the time the hay is ready, Davie will be here on leave?’

‘I’ve hardly thought about anything else! Ten more days to go. And we mustn’t forget, Meg, that when the hay is loaded and carted off to the farm, we must wish very seriously as it goes by.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘Because you always wish on the first load of hay you see every year. Hay wishes are good ones, like first-swallow wishes. Hay and swallows have never let me down, so keep an eye open for your first swallow. They’ll be arriving any day now!’

‘Wouldn’t know a swallow if I saw one, Polly. You’ll have to show me.’

Mind, she was getting good with robins and tits and thrushes and blackbirds; especially with blackbirds since now she knew the difference between cocks and hens! Only give her a little more time and she would know as much about the countryside as Polly!

‘Bet I know what you’ll be wishin’ for,’ she teased, so happy that all at once she felt peculiar – like someone had walked over her grave – if she’d been dead and buried, that was. ‘And it’s OK! I know you can’t tell me, and I won’t tell you what I wish either!’

But her wish was there in her mind already, so that when she saw her first swallow of the summer and when the hay wagon trundled past, she would close her eyes, cross her fingers and say in her mind, ‘I wish to stay at Candlefold for ever, and live here till I die …’

They saw their first swallow next day as they fed and watered the hens. It came swooping and diving out of the sky above the drying green.

‘There you are, Meg. Wish!’

Eyes closed they wished tremulously, smiling secretly.

‘You’re sure it’ll come true?’

‘Always has, Meg, though now I always wish for the same thing – y’know, pile them all up so in the end it’s got to come true.’

‘A sort of long-term wish, like mine. An’ maybe when we load the hay there’ll be another one of the same, eh?’

‘Oh, yes! I do so miss Davie. There wasn’t a letter this morning, y’know …’

Meg had noticed. It was always the same, the no-letter look: sad and yearny, sort of.

‘There’ll be two tomorrow. Maybe he’s on manoeuvres.’

‘Maybe.’

‘An’ he’s out in the wilds with no pillar box.’

‘Probably.’

‘An’ I’ll tell you something else. This isn’t our lucky day, Polly.’ She nodded in the direction of two camouflaged trucks that swooped in from the lane to stop outside the far archway. ‘Wouldn’t you know it? That lot from London, on the snoop! What’ll they say when they see our hay? Just a few more days, an’ we’d have got away with it!’

‘No! It can’t be!’ Polly, face flushed with disbelief, gasped. ‘But it is! It is! Davie Sumner! Darling!’

Then she was running, laughing, to where two soldiers stood, dressed in battledress tops, khaki trouser bottoms bound by puttees, their brown boots shining. And the two of them grinning with delight at the upset they had caused.

With a cry of joy, Polly went into Davie’s arms, to stand close, cheek on cheek, not kissing, just glad to touch and hold, to fondle the back of his neck with her fingertips.

‘You weren’t expected yet!’ She closed her eyes and offered her mouth. ‘Davie – nothing is wrong …?’

‘No.’ He kissed her lips gently. ‘Leave next week.’

‘Then what? Why?’ She turned to hug her brother. ‘Meg, this is Mark.’

‘Mark,’ Meg whispered, offering her hand, feeling it tremble as Mark Kenworthy folded his own around it. And if he was good to look at in a silver-framed photograph, then standing there, warm and real, he was altogether too much to take in. And he looking down at her with eyes bluer than Polly’s, even; eyes that swept her from head to toes – slowly and deliberately so there could be no mistaking his approval.

‘Glad to meet you at last, Meg.’ He let go her hand to raise his cap in salute, all the time smiling as if he really meant it.

‘And this is Davie, my fiancé.’

Polly’s voice seemed far away and strange, like an echo, because something had hit Margaret Mary Blundell with such force that she recognized it as a very real boing! and knew that unless she held her breath and counted slowly to ten, she was going to do something very stupid, like falling in a delicious, disbelieving faint.

‘Davie …’ Meg murmured, knowing she should be liking what she saw – a happy grin, a fresh, freckled face, thick, untidy hair the colour of a ripe conker. But she was incapable of doing anything because the boing! was reverberating unchecked around her stomach and slipping and slicing to her fingertips and toes.

‘Well – come on, then – tell. Why are you here, and are you sure it’s nothing sinister?’

‘Nothing more than a thirty-mile detour on the way down to Burford Camp – in Wiltshire.’

‘You’re both being posted somewhere new, then?’

‘No. Going to collect a convoy of trucks and lorries, actually – escort them north,’ Mark supplied. ‘Fifty-three to be exact and all newly passed-out drivers. First time any of them will have done a long-distance convoy. And to add to the confusion, there are ATS drivers amongst them – women …’

‘And what is wrong with women?’ Huffily, Meg found her voice, stung to defend her own sex, and because she wasn’t going to let him get away with being so gorgeous nor play havoc with her insides without some show of protest, she glared as she said it.

‘Nothing at all. In their right and proper place ATS girls are a delight. But I don’t appreciate them in a long-haul convoy, Meg Merrilees. They’re just not built for driving heavy army lorries!’

‘No. I reckon they’d all rather be in their proper place at home, but a lot of them didn’t have much of a choice!’ Meg flung.

‘Now stop it, Mark! C’mon – let’s find Mummy!’

Polly took Davie’s hand, her happiness a delight to see.

‘Shall we?’ Mark indicated the archway with an exaggerated sweep of his hand.

‘Er – no, ta. I’ve got things to do – the hens, for a start.’ This was a family thing and she wasn’t pushing in. ‘And why did you call me Merrilees? My name is Blundell!’

‘You haven’t heard of Meg Merrilees?’ He was looking at her as if she were stupid.

‘No. Should I have?’

‘I’d have thought so. She was a gypsy, who lived upon the moors. It’s a poem!’

‘Oh. I see.’ She didn’t see, of course, because no one had taught her poems about gypsies. ‘Er – well – got to go. Nice meetin’ you,’ she added, remembering her manners.

‘Nice meeting you too. See you around. Bye, Merrilees!’

And he was gone, boots clattering on the courtyard cobbles, back straight as a ramrod. So sure of himself, she thought angrily; sure of his charm, the certain knowledge that his smiling gaze could charm the ducks off a pond! Likely he did that to all the girls he met, but it wasn’t goin’ to work with Meg Blundell – too right it wasn’t! Her insides were back to normal again. She was in charge of her emotions though she knew now exactly what Polly had meant about that boing! It had really been something – till she’d got the better of it, that was!

But for all that, her hand was just a little unsteady as she laid eggs as carefully as she was able in the bottom of the bucket. Meg Merrilees, for Pete’s sake! A gypsy, was she, because she couldn’t talk proper! Skittin’ her, was he?

Well, sod Mark Kenworthy, because he wasn’t gettin’ the chance to throw her into a tizzy again, she would see to that! Nell had been right. Likely he was no better than the rest of them, and out for one thing!

Well, she wouldn’t let him make a fool of her like some scally had made a fool of Ma! And anyway, would a feller like him, who could have any girl he took a fancy to, be interested in someone from a slum like Tippet’s Yard and who was illegitimate, an’ all? Bet your life he wouldn’t, so forget him, Meg Blundell; stick to your own kind!

Yet, for all that, she wondered if he could dance and remembered that Polly had said he could. Oh, heck! Imagine dancing with him. Close. It didn’t bear thinking about!

‘There you are! Where on earth did you get to, Meg? They’ve gone now, and you weren’t there to say goodbye! Mark asked especially; said I was to say so long to you – Davie, too.’

‘Ar, well, that was nice of them both, but I reckoned it was family, so I went to see Mr Potter, ask if he wanted anything doing. I heard them go.’ Such a hooting and laughing and crunching of tyres on the gravel drive, and she breathing a sigh of relief – or was it regret? – that they’d gone. ‘Less than two hours! Talk about a flying visit!’

‘Mm. They only had time for a sandwich. Mark looked in on Nanny, then went to sit with Gran, and Davie and I went to look at the hay at the brick house. Then we sat on the front steps as if we’d every right to be there, and talked and talked.

‘And I forgot to tell you! Mummy had a letter from a school friend this morning – they’ve kept in touch for years and years – and would you believe it, her daughter got married about a month ago. She sent a photo of the bride. Such a beautiful white dress with a full skirt and train.’

‘Don’t tell me. Bet she’s offered the lend of it!’

‘She has! Isn’t that lovely of her? And we are about the same height and build. She’s even offered her wedding shoes, which are size five, like I take.’

‘And will you mind being married secondhand, then?’

‘Of course not. And think of the coupons I’ll save. Davie and I were talking about it, and when he comes on leave we’re going to ask if we can get married before I’m twenty-one. It’s so awful, waiting, when we both know there’ll never be anyone else.’

‘I’ll agree with you there. You and him look good together. Made me a bit envious, wishin’ I was close to someone. But I haven’t met him, yet …’

‘So you didn’t like Mark? Surely you found him just a little bit attractive?’

‘Listen, Polly, your brother isn’t for the likes of me. I’d be a right fool, wouldn’t I, to let myself fall for him?’

‘Why would you? And I’ve told you before, you don’t let yourself fall in love; it just happens. Seems pretty obvious that you just didn’t like him. A pity, that, when I’d thought we could make up a foursome when they’re home and go to a dance somewhere.’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t like him, and I certainly wouldn’t mind going dancin’ with him – in a foursome. But I wouldn’t let it go any further than that!’

‘You’re a strange girl.’ Polly frowned. ‘You seem so set against being in love. Why, will you tell me?’

‘I’m not against it!’ Meg coloured hotly, because she had fallen for Polly’s brother, if that boing! had been anything to go by. But his sort would take advantage of her sort. Stood to reason that any feller as good-looking as he was would think girls were there for the taking. ‘I – I’ll know when I’ve fallen in love, and when I do you’ll be the first to know. I wonder where they are now.’

‘Going like the clappers to make up the lost time, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Polly smiled dreamily. ‘Such a lovely surprise. And by the way, what did you do with today’s eggs?’

‘Left them in the wash house – didn’t want to come to the house, like I said. I’ll get them for you.’

She hurried off, glad to be away from Polly’s questioning and from her own downright lies, because to think of Mark kissing her made her go very peculiar.

But thinking about it was all she would do, because kissing and all that was what got girls into trouble, and she was living proof of it!

Yet mightn’t it be nice to give it a whirl? Just the once? For the heck of it?

‘Especially not for the heck of it, Meg Blundell, if you know what’s good for you,’ hissed a voice in her ear that sounded remarkably like Nell Shaw’s.

‘Oh, damn and blast!’

She shook the voice away, gazing intently at ten brown eggs, wondering why all of a sudden life seemed to have become so very complicated.

It was Sunday – six days more to cross off on the calendar – and they worked for the best part of the day on the hay on the brick house lawns, gathering it into lines with three-foot-wide wooden hay rakes. The better the day, the better the deed, Armitage said, and since the war didn’t stop on Sundays, he could see no reason why they shouldn’t get it cocked and loaded and safe in the barn by evening.

‘Right! Are you ready?’ They stood side by side, eyes closed, fingers crossed as the load of hay bumped past them. ‘Wish, Meg …’

And though she had never felt so tired in her life before, and there was a blister on her hand, Meg knew she had never been so happy, and hoped with all her heart that her wish to stay at Candlefold for ever and ever would be granted. Oh, please it would!

‘Tomorrow, if anyone asks, I’ll be able to say that Davie will be home this week. Think of it, Meg; this week. Seven whole days to spend together.’

‘I’m goin’ to miss you when you go off to Oxford.’

‘No you won’t. There’ll be Mark around.’

‘So there will. But I’m here to work, remember, an’ I’ll be busier than ever when you’re away.’

‘So you won’t be going out with my brother, if he asks you – which he will!’

‘You think so? Oh, I don’t think he will – me bein’ a servant, I mean.’

‘You’re not a servant. You’re Candlefold’s home help, and I’d miss you if you left. It’s my guess he’ll ask you out once Davie and I have gone to Oxford. Don’t be so prim, Meg. Say you’ll go!’

‘He hasn’t asked, yet.’ Mind, it might be fun for the heck of it, whispered a voice in her ear nothing at all like Nell Shaw’s. ‘Let’s wait and see, shall we, Polly?’

It was then they heard the bell and ran laughing down the lane to the far archway, then across the yard to arrive breathless in the kitchen.

‘All safely gathered in. Armitage says there’s the best part of a ton, and all good stuff for the war effort, and I’m starving!’ Polly gasped.

‘Then off upstairs, the pair of you, for a wash. It’ll be on the table in two minutes. Roast rabbit, and gooseberries and custard for pudding. Away with you now!’ Mary Kenworthy smiled, feeling almost contented. Mind, there was always the war out there, ready to take all your waking thoughts if you let it, but on the credit side was a wagonload of good hay, and Mark and Davie coming home on Friday.

It was because of her relaxed mood that they decided to play gramophone records in Mrs Kenworthy’s room instead of listening to the nine o’clock news. Had they listened, maybe the shock of what Mrs Potter was to push through the letter box next morning might have been less acute. And since Polly always waited for the morning mail it was she who burst into the kitchen, eyes wide.

‘My God! Hitler’s invaded Russia! Go on – read it!’

‘Russia!’ Mary Kenworthy reached for her reading glasses. ‘Oh my goodness, let me see!’

The headlines in the Telegraph were large and unmistakable: ‘RUSSIA ATTACKED ON 1,800 MILE FRONT’. Agitated, she spread the paper on the kitchen table so they might read it together. ‘Yesterday, it was. Early in the morning. More than three million soldiers! And Mr Churchill was on the wireless last night. The one time we miss the evening news, and he’s on!’

‘It says he said we’d give Russia all the help we can; said he’d warned Stalin about it. Will our troops be sent there to fight?’

‘I – I wouldn’t think so, Polly. After all, we’ve never got on very well with the Communists, have we?’

‘But they are fighting Hitler now, so that makes them our ally!’

‘It says,’ Meg jabbed a finger, ‘that Mr Churchill offered any technical or economic assistance. There’s nuthink about sending troops.’

‘Oh, I hope not. And had you thought – Davie and Mark’s leave might be cancelled now?’

‘Darling, don’t upset yourself before we know what it’s all about,’ Mary Kenworthy soothed, ‘and I think we should spare a thought for the Russian people. It seems they’ve been terribly bombed and weren’t able to put up much resistance.’

‘Then Stalin should’ve listened to what Mr Churchill told him,’ Meg said matter-of-factly. ‘An’ if all Hitler’s soldiers and bombers are attacking Russia, they’ll maybe leave us alone.’ She remembered the seven-night bombing of Liverpool and was instantly contrite. ‘Mind, it isn’t very nice for them, gettin’ bombed.’

‘What shall we tell Gran and Nanny?’

‘I think we’d better switch on for the eight o’clock news, hear what the BBC has to say about it, then when we take up the breakfasts we’ll know better what to say.’

‘Gran’ll be all right, but how Nanny is going to take it is anybody’s guess,’ Polly shrugged.

‘Then it’s my guess that she’ll pull up the drawbridge and pretend none of it is happening,’ Meg offered.

‘So how about we get ourselves a cup of tea and a slice of toast and jam,’ Mary Kenworthy smiled brightly, ‘and listen to the news? Switch on, will you, Meg? Polly, cut the bread, please. And let’s all think how lucky we are safe here at Candlefold.’

‘And let’s hope them – those – Russians’ll give Hitler the shock of his life, ’cause he’s invaded whichever country he thought fit,’ Meg muttered. ‘About time someone stood up to him!’

Then she wondered what Nell and Tommy were thinking and saying about it back in Tippet’s Yard, and all at once she missed them and wished she could be with them – just for a little while …

Next morning low clouds blotted out the sun and not long afterwards it began to rain; drops the size of halfpennies making dark circles on the flags and cobbles of the yard.

‘Rain!’ Meg was dismayed, because it shouldn’t rain at Candlefold! Since she’d come here the sky had been blue, the sun constant. Now, all was gloomy and rain fell steadily. ‘It looks as if it’s set in for the day!’

‘We did need it, Meg. The ground was getting very dry.’ Mrs John said. ‘Armitage said that once the farmers had got their hay in, it could rain as soon as it liked.’

‘There’ll be no work done in the garden now,’ Polly shrugged, ‘so tell me what needs doing inside.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind, you and Meg can make up the beds ready for Mark and Davie, and give the rooms a clean – put out towels.’

‘If they come,’ Polly sighed, taking sheets from the linen cupboard.

‘Of course they’ll come. Give me one good reason why they shouldn’t!’

‘We-e-ll, Russia, for a start.’

‘Them Russians can look after themselves. Mr Churchill as good as said we wouldn’t be sending troops. But how about Nanny – sayin’ the Tsar would send the Cossacks in and soon put paid to the Germans?’

‘Nanny’s in another world. She just doesn’t want to know!’

‘So what would happen if everybody did the same, then? What if our lads in the Forces acted like she did? “Stick yer ’eads in the sand, lads! Pretend it isn’t happening!”’

‘Meg – don’t. It isn’t like you to be vindictive!’

‘All right! I’ll say no more! Let’s talk about Davie. Had you thought that when you wake up in the morning, there’ll only be three days to go?’

‘Go-to-beds, I used to call them. Y’know – how many more go-to-beds before Father Christmas comes.’

‘Then it’s four go-to-beds, and your Davie’ll be here and you’ll be wondering why you worried! Now chuck them pillows over, will you?’

‘Meg – don’t ever leave, will you?’

‘I won’t. And that’s a promise!’ A promise, she thought as she stuffed pillows into cases, she would do her utmost to keep. ‘Had you thought,’ she smiled, ‘that this rain will do the strawberries a whole lot of good – make them swell?’

‘So it will. You’re getting to be quite a country girl, Meg Blundell! Mind, enough is enough. If it rains too much they’ll rot, then Mr Potter will hit the roof. All our work wasted. Now, let’s get these rooms seen to, then we’ll have a chat with Gran. Being in bed watching it rain must be awful, and cold wet weather makes her joints ache more.’

‘Then we’ll try to cheer her up a bit.’ Meg liked Mrs Kenworthy, who was so grateful for even the smallest attention and hardly ever tugged on the bell pull at her bedside. And the old lady had remembered Ma, so it was almost certain she knew what had happened to her and even, Meg brooded, who the feller was. Yet Meg had insisted her mother’s name was Hilda and that her father died at sea, because she’d known instinctively the time had not been right for questions. Nor for answers either, because the Kenworthys might want to forget what had happened under their own roof twenty years ago, and all the upset it must have caused. ‘We’ve neglected her these last few days, what with the haymakin’, an’ all.’

‘Mm. But I enjoyed it, Meg. It was great stealing our own hay, and getting away with it, didn’t you think?’

‘Yes, an’ serve London right for nicking your ’ouse without a by-your-leave. We’ll do it again next year, eh?’

If she were still here, that was. If National Service didn’t catch up with her. If They said that helping to look after two old ladies and working sometimes in the kitchen garden to dig for victory wasn’t enough, and she had to go into the armed forces or get herself back to Liverpool to work in munitions. Big money to be earned there, but she didn’t want big money. A pound a week suited her very nicely and she wanted nothing to change.

‘Hey! You were miles away! Bet you were thinking about Mark!’

‘No, I wasn’t! I was thinkin’ about when I’m twenty and have to register. I don’t want to, you know.’

‘Nor me. When is your birthday, Meg?’

‘August the twenty-ninth.’

‘Goodness! And mine’s on the twenty-eighth, would you believe! Sometimes I wish I knew where I was born, but Mummy always says she was never told, that they got me from the Church of England Adoption Society, and they wouldn’t say. They don’t, you know. Where were you born, Meg?’

‘Lyra Street, Liverpool 3.’ The lie came easily to her tongue. ‘Mrs Shaw – the neighbour I’ve told you about – was there, helping the midwife, I believe.’

Lies, which led to more lies, and all the time wanting to say she had been born here at Candlefold.

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