Leaves Before the Storm Page 4

  The lane crossed the open heathland of the New Forest for a way before twisting down towards the foreshore of the River Stib as it meandered its way towards the Solent and the open sea. On that hot August day the heather murmured with the constant hum of bees gathering the last of the summer’s nectar; butterflies frittered away their short lifespan spreading their multicoloured wings in the warmth, and swifts, swallows and house martins dived across the road before lining up on the telephone wires in readiness for their migration to sunnier climes. Megan began to relax again. The birds still behaved in the same way; war would not stop them from leaving England for Africa. War could not change the rhythm of the seasons.

  Crossing the bridge over the inlet which separated one side of the New Forest from Stibbington, she drove into the High Street. A florist’s shop crowned the hill. Outside stood two green buckets crammed with coral-coloured gladioli. The brilliance of their colour spread a glowing warmth which reached Megan’s heart. On impulse she stopped the car.

  ‘This isn’t right.’ Dottie looked worried. ‘Clarence Stores is down on the quay.’

  ‘I know, but I want some flowers first.’ Megan pointed at the gladioli. ‘Look at those. Aren’t they a wonderful colour? They look as if they are on fire.’

  A smiling Miss Cozens, the owner of the shop, came out to greet them. ‘Hello, Mrs Lockwood, hello Dottie.’ Miss Cozens was of indeterminate age, and was small and frail looking. But her looks belied her strength. Megan had seen her manhandle great boxes and buckets of flowers around, and she’d owned and run the shop in the High Street for as long as anyone could remember. ‘You are looking very well today,’ she said.

  Megan stood on the pavement gazing at the gladioli. ‘I feel very well,’ she said, suddenly realizing that she actually did. Pointing at the gladioli, she said, ‘I’ll take all of those.’

  Miss Cozens folded her arms across her bony chest and looked surprised. ‘All of them?’

  ‘Every single one. I’m feeling extravagant.’

  ‘And why not?’ Miss Cozens set about wrapping the long stemmed flowers in shiny blue paper. ‘You might as well be extravagant now, while you’ve got the chance. There won’t be many flowers once the war starts.’

  ‘Why not?’ Megan was surprised.

  ‘I’m closing the shop. That’s why. Flowers are no use against that awful Hitler man. I am doing something more useful than selling flowers. I’m joining up.’

  ‘Joining up?’ Megan thought Miss Cozens was probably too old to join anything.

  ‘Yes, I shall join whoever or whatever will have me.’ Miss Cozens jutted her jaw out determinedly. ‘I might not be in the first flush of youth, but there’s plenty of fight left in me yet. I shall drive an ambulance if silly old Colonel Blewitt lets me. He’s against women drivers, but he’ll be glad to have us when the war starts and all the men disappear.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ replied Megan, who hadn’t given driving ambulances a thought before.

  ‘Now you open the boot of your car,’ said Miss Cozens briskly, ‘and I’ll put these flowers in.’ Megan did as she was told, watched by Dottie.

  ‘I wish I could drive,’ said Dottie wistfully. ‘Then I could drive an ambulance.’

  ‘You just concentrate on what you’re good at. You’ll be needed up at Folly House,’ said Miss Cozens kindly.

  ‘Yes,’ said Megan quickly. ‘We couldn’t do without you, Dottie, and I shall need you more than ever when I’ve had the baby. Someone will have to look after it when I’m busy in the office.’

  Dottie looked pleased. ‘Will you let me take the baby out in his pram?’

  ‘Of course.’ Megan wondered whether it was wise to say yes.

  Miss Cozens finished packing the flowers in the boot. She looked at Megan. ‘What are you planning to do?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m already doing something,’ Megan replied. ‘Henry has made me his estate manager as he is in London now most of the time.’

  ‘Mr Henry does important war work,’ said Dottie proudly. ‘I know because I heard my mum say so.’

  ‘Civil Defence planning for when the war starts,’ explained Megan.

  ‘Good for him,’ said Miss Cozens.

  ‘Of course, there’s still a chance there might not be a war,’ said Megan.

  ‘And pigs might fly,’ was Miss Cozens’s unequivocal reply. ‘I’m glad you are doing something. There will be a great many things an educated young woman like you can do. You’ll be in great demand.’

  Later, waiting for Dottie to purchase the Kilner jars, she thought about Miss Cozens’s remark. I am an educated woman, but I haven’t really bothered to think since I left school. But it’s true. I do have the chance now. Immersed in her thoughts she didn’t at first see the two men who emerged from the hotel; they were both dressed in pinstriped suits. She locked the car and crossed the road, intending to help Dottie carry the shopping, but then noticed the two men and realized that one of them was Gerald. He saw her immediately and came across with the other man beside him. On reaching Megan, he put his arm proprietoriarily around her waist.

  ‘This is my new sister-in-law, Megan,’ he said, squeezing her in closer. ‘Gorgeous, isn’t she.’ He indicated the other man. ‘This is Roderick Williams from the Royal Swallows Bank in London. He’s down here doing one or two shady deals with me.’ He laughed.

  Roderick Williams looked embarrassed. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs Lockwood,’ he said.

  Megan nodded a quick acknowledgement and tried to edge away, but Gerald didn’t let her go. There was a strong smell of alcohol on his breath, and she turned her head away. But Gerald persisted. ‘What is Henry thinking about, staying up in London all the time, and leaving a gorgeous filly like you down here alone?’

  ‘I’m not alone, Gerald,’ said Megan firmly, managing to disengage his hand. As she spoke Dottie came out of Clarence Stores, carrying an enormous box of Kilner jars. It was her opportunity. ‘Excuse me now, I must get the car and help Dottie. That box is far too heavy for her to carry across the quay.’

  ‘Oh!’ Gerald scowled. ‘I was going to ask you to take tea with me in Stibbington after Roderick has got the train back to London.’

  ‘Quite impossible,’ said Megan briskly, ‘but thank you for asking me. Excuse me now, gentlemen, I must get the car.’ She indicated to Dottie to wait outside the shop and went to fetch the car.

  As she drove away from Clarence Stores she could see Gerald and Roderick Williams going towards Stibbington railway station. Everyone knew Gerald was making money from armaments and obviously the Royal Swallows Bank was financing one of his nefarious deals. What had happened to the Gerald she’d once known? Why was he so obsessed with money? But even as she thought this, a guilty feeling reminded her that she had wanted money too, and had married Henry to get it. But that wasn’t so bad, was it?

  Dottie, blissfully unaware of Megan’s troubled thoughts, enjoyed her afternoon enormously. Especially when Megan took her for tea at the Anchor Hotel which overlooked the Stib estuary; they had tiny cucumber sandwiches, tea and biscuits in a posh hotel, and even better, they sat in the bay window where she could see everything, and where Megan kept a watchful eye out for Gerald.

  Later Megan visited the rectory and told Arthur of her encounter with Gerald. ‘You want to be careful,’ said Arthur, looking worried. ‘I have a feeling Gerald could be bad news; he’s not to be trusted.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Megan noncommittally. What would he say if he knew just how untrustworthy Gerald was, or herself come to that?

  ‘I am right. I don’t like him,’ said Arthur sharply. ‘But once the war really starts, all the able-bodied men will be called up, even Gerald.’ He hunched his shoulders. ‘You’ll have to make do with a few puny men like me to hold the fort.’

  ‘You’re not puny,’ said Megan. ‘It’s not your fault you caught polio.’

  Arthur shrugged again. ‘Just me feeling sorry for myself,’ he said, adding, ‘and you’d b
etter be going unless you want a session with our esteemed housekeeper. She’ll be back from shopping soon, and you know she doesn’t like visitors interrupting her regime.’

  Megan gave a wry smile at the thought. The housekeeper in question was a formidable widow, called Mrs Fox, who was a staunch Salvation Army member. After Megan had married and left the rectory a housekeeper was needed for Arthur and her father. Megan had found Mrs Fox from a notice in the window of the local grocer. Mrs Fox had advertised her services by a card placed in Torbocks’ window. Torbocks was the largest grocer in Stibbington and everyone shopped there. Megan made the arrangements, much against her father’s wishes.

  ‘I can manage perfectly well with Arthur to help me,’ he said.

  Arthur had objected too. He didn’t care whether the house was tidy or not. All he cared about was playing the piano.

  But Megan had insisted. ‘No, you can’t manage,’ she had said looking around at the untidy kitchen, and the even more untidy dining room, which her father had overflowed into and was using as a study. Arthur in the music room was even worse, sheet music was everywhere. ‘You both need someone to organize you.’

  ‘We don’t want to be organized,’ said Arthur.

  ‘No, we don’t. I don’t want anything moved. I always know exactly where everything is,’ said Marcus grumpily. ‘You know I hate being organized.’

  Megan ignored them both and Mrs Fox duly arrived at the rectory.

  Marcus was afraid of Mrs Fox the moment he clapped eyes on her. ‘You know I am a Church of England minister,’ he said, when he’d reluctantly interviewed her for the position. ‘And you are Salvation Army. Where religion is concerned we have very different views on many things.’

  ‘The Lord moves in mysterious ways,’ boomed Mrs Fox loudly, and rather ominously Marcus thought. ‘He has sent me here to look after you.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure whether I can offer you the post now, I do have another …’ Marcus was going to lie and say he had some other women to interview, but Mrs Fox, already primed by Megan, didn’t listen. She rose to her feet, opened her handbag with a decisive snap and passed him some letters.

  ‘Here are my references. You’ll not find them wanting. I’ll go upstairs now and look at the bedrooms and decide which one I’ll have. I daresay I’ll know which ones are yours and Arthur’s. They will be untidy, if the look of downstairs is anything to go by.’

  So Mrs Fox moved in, and Marcus Elliot and Arthur had never lived in such a spotless house, nor had they had their meals served so regularly before. Marcus didn’t like it, but Arthur took to it like a duck to water. Not having to think about the house left him even more time to play his music. He needed to practise, as Megan had promised she’d try to persuade Henry to finance him at the Royal Academy in London if he could pass the audition.

  Mrs Fox believed that cleanliness and organization were the nearest things to godliness, and decreed that meals should be eaten on the dot of twelve noon and 5.30 p.m. in the evening. Marcus hated eating just before evensong; he preferred a leisurely meal after the service. But 5.30 p.m. it was because after that Mrs Fox went off to play the trumpet in the Salvation Army Band as they made their way through the forest villages. They played at various inns, saving souls and collecting money at the same time.

  Another problem for Marcus was that she did not allow a drop of alcohol in the house. He had to make do with the dregs of the communion wine, although even that was rationed. Wine taken in the name of the Lord came under Mrs Fox’s organizational skills. The church was next door to the vicarage and she considered it part of her remit. She enjoyed working in the beautiful Norman church, which was so different from the tin hut where the Salvation Army worshipped, and she started overseeing the flower rota, which caused Marcus problems with the older ladies of the village.

  She also laid out the communion table with the wafers and wine, always measuring just enough wine for the congregation to take a sip. Marcus began looking forward to the mornings when there was an unexpected drop in attendance, then he would drain the chalice on the steps of the altar so that it was always empty before being returned to the vestry where Mrs Fox could get her hands on it, and, to Marcus’s horror, would pour the wine left down the sink.

  After leaving Arthur Megan drove back to Folly House. The summer of 1939 had been long and hot and the countryside on that late afternoon looked as if a large brush of tawny gold had been splashed over it. Everything was painted in subtle browns and golds and Megan paused at the side of the road to drink in the scene. There was no wind, so the sea had a molten sheen. The tide was out and the mud of the marshes and ancient saltings glinted rose pink in the last rays of the sun.

  ‘Such a peaceful unchanging landscape,’ said Megan to herself, suddenly feeling content. So different from London and other cities with their barrage balloons bumbling about in the sky like enormous prehistoric animals, and the ugly brick-and-concrete air-raid shelters with their piles of sandbags at the doorways. That was another world. This world, her world, changed slowly with the tides and seasons; the impact of man on the landscape was imperceptible, and that was how it was meant to be. No hastily thrown up slabs of concrete would disfigure the view here.

  Except for the two Anderson shelters dug into the garden of Folly House. Henry had said they were needed, so they were installed with enough room for everyone should they be needed. But Megan had insisted on George planting honeysuckle and clematis on either side, so that next year they would be covered in flowers and hardly visible.

  Not that she could envisage that they would ever need them.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  September 1939

  On Friday 1 September 1939 Henry walked slowly down the long corridor of St Thomas’s Hospital, where he’d trained and worked all his professional life. This would be the last time for as far as he could see in the turbulent world of 1939. The familiar smells of the hospital, the carbolic disinfectant, the floor polish together with the ever-lingering smell of cooked cabbage had always comforted him; he’d felt at home in the hospital since the very first day he’d stepped inside as a medical student. But now he was about to enter the unknown world of an officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps. He would join his unit after the coming weekend and after that had no idea when he would see Megan or anyone else at Folly House.

  The thought caused him to falter. No one there knew he had enlisted. They were in for a shock. Everything had happened at breakneck speed once he’d made his mind up to enlist. The authorities at the hospital had given their blessing to his leaving to enter the army, but somehow he doubted the family at Folly House would be so generous.

  ‘You should at least have told Megan,’ Adam had said in surprise.

  But he had not. Part of him felt guilty at leaving a pregnant young wife, but he could stand by no longer: he had to do something. Hitler and the Nazis were ruthless in their quest for domination of Europe. Life was going to change for everyone, even those in the New Forest.

  But he comforted himself that everything would be fine. Megan had made such progress with the management of the house and farm; there was nothing to be concerned about. But he did wonder if Megan realized that he was not a wealthy man, and that without his salary and money from his private practice, the land would have to pay for itself. A captain in the army didn’t earn as much as a surgeon in London. It was something he had never discussed with her.

  When he’d told Adam of his worries Adam had laughed. ‘I can’t see what’s bothering you,’ he said. ‘You’re doing the right thing. Your country needs you more than they do. Anyway, I’ll come down to Folly House the first weekend in September, when you tell them, to give you moral support.’

  He had spoken to Adam that very morning as soon as he heard the latest radio reports. Hitler’s armies and air force had crossed the Polish frontier in a blitzkrieg of bombing, backed up by tanks. ‘Will you still be able to come?’

  ‘Yes, although it will probably be for the last
time in peacetime; war is sure to be declared now.’ Adam sounded excited. ‘Soon I’ll be able to get at the blighters. I’ll blast them out of the sky.’

  Henry didn’t think war should be approached with such relish, but that was Adam. He loved living on the edge. Henry viewed the forthcoming weekend with a mixture of pleasure at being at Folly House and apprehension at having to tell everyone of his decision. He’d arranged with Silas Moon and George Jones to get the guns and beaters ready for a spot of shooting on the estate. Adam would love that. Megan wouldn’t. He sensed she was jealous of Adam and felt slightly guilty because he’d seen far more of Adam lately and knew he had neglected her.

  There was no way he could explain why he needed Adam’s company more than hers. It was illogical. He couldn’t even explain it properly to himself, except that he felt they were closer than brothers. They thought alike on everything: music, politics, literature and the theatre. They were on the same wavelength, seeming to know what the other was thinking without the need to speak sometimes. Conversation was never difficult, they could talk about everything. Whereas with Megan he often felt tongue-tied, needing to think before he spoke, unsure of her sensitivities. Maybe it was because she was a woman. The only disagreement with Adam had been when he married Megan. Adam could not understand Henry’s necessity for marriage and an heir to Folly House, which, he’d scathingly remarked, was not a stately home, merely a large country house with a farm attached. In his turn Henry had been disappointed both with Adam for not understanding, and with Megan for not liking Adam. However, Adam’s friendship was strong and rare, and one he prized above all else.

  He decided that when they arrived at Folly House later that evening, the first thing he would do was to call a meeting of everyone: Megan, Lavinia and the Jones family. Then he would announce that from the following Monday, 4 September, he would be a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps, and would be reporting for duty on that day. He would be known in future as Captain Lockwood RAMC.