Dark Harvest Read online

  Walking through to the platform, he was puzzled to find Mrs Chappell serving teas, and no sign of Phoebe. ‘Is my daughter here. Airs Chappell?’

  ‘Not now, Rector. Taken a job, she has. She looks in here from time to time.’

  For a moment he did not take it in. Of all his children, he worried most about Phoebe, who had the least common sense and, more important, the least sense of self-preservation. ‘Where will I find her?’ he demanded, fear making him abrupt.

  Mrs Chappell hesitated, glad the train from London had pulled in so she had an excuse not to answer him as busily she handed out teas and lemonade. He must find the stationmaster. But there was no sign of Chappell inside the booking office and, hovering irresolutely, he noticed a young woman questioning young Mutter as she handed him her ticket. A striking-looking woman, about thirty, with neat hair and a dark green suit and hat. Despite his concern for Phoebe, he wondered fleetingly who she was.

  ‘Where can I find Tillow House?’ he heard her ask.

  ‘Down the lane, miss, turn left.’

  She looked through the window down the length of Station Road and then at her luggage. ‘Is there a cab?’

  ‘Only the carrier, miss, and he’s just left.’

  Curious as to who she was, Laurence came forward. ‘If you’ll allow me, I’ll escort you to Tillow House. We can manage these suitcases between us. I am Laurence Lilley, Rector of Ashden.’

  She turned to him gratefully. ‘Thank you.’ Her face was glowing, alive, a strong face, he thought, even more intrigued.

  ‘You’re to stay with Dr Marden’s family?’ he asked, as they set off down the lane.

  ‘For the moment.’

  ‘Forgive my curiosity, but I realise now. You must be his niece, Rachel, Mrs Smythe’s daughter.’ Dr Marden’s sister had been lost in the Empress of Ireland disaster.

  ‘I’m no relation. My name is Beth Parry. I’m his new assistant.’

  ‘A nurse? But Miss Marden is—’

  ‘I am a doctor, Mr Lilley.’

  ‘Phoebe, a word if you please.’

  Phoebe, steering her bicycle quickly round the bushes in the hope of evading scrutiny, stopped guiltily at the unusual sight of her father thrusting open his study window and positively shouting at her. He must know. It wasn’t fair—she had been on the point of telling him. She left the bicycle where it was and went to the study to face retribution.

  ‘Phoebe, I gather you’ve taken another job. Can you explain why you felt you could not discuss it with me?’

  Trust Father to make her feel really mean. She opened her mouth to defend herself, but then realised there was no defence. But she had done the right thing, she reminded herself.

  ‘I had to, Father. I felt I ought to do more for the war effort. There was less and less to do at the station, and this way I really am helping the troops.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘In the refreshment room of the recreation hut in Crowborough Warren.’

  ‘What?’ This was far worse than he’d feared. ‘In an Army camp? Phoebe, can you really believe this is the right place for you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Phoebe quavered. Then she found her tongue. ‘The hut was opened by Princess Victoria. It’s run by the YMCA, a Christian fellowship. I’m just looking after young boys far from home.’

  Laurence’s lips longed to twitch, but he restrained them, for this was a serious matter. ‘My dear child, Army camps are notorious for licentious behaviour. After all, your friend Patricia is a policewoman patrolling such camps to look out for young girls in moral danger.’ He stopped as a thought occurred to him. ‘Was this her idea?’

  ‘Mine,’ Phoebe said hastily. ‘She did mention it to me, but it was my decision.’

  ‘Patricia is a lot older than you, Phoebe.’

  ‘I’m seventeen.’

  ‘And no doubt you told them you were eighteen.’

  ‘Under-age men are volunteering daily, Father. Why not women?’

  ‘Because, Phoebe,’ he was exasperated, ‘young women are more vulnerable than young men in such environments.’

  ‘They are—’

  ‘That’s enough!’ He had tried to be reasonable, but how could he be in the circumstances? ‘You will leave immediately.’

  ‘Oh no, Father,’ she wailed. ‘I love it there. And Mrs Manning is very strict and I’m cheering them up and, oh, they like me there. Nobody here in Ashden likes me.’ She burst into tears.

  Appalled, Laurence realised how little he knew of his own child and her problems. What could she mean, no one in Ashden liked her? There was some deep trouble here and he must tread more delicately than he’d planned.

  ‘Very well. I will have a talk with this Mrs Manning.’

  Phoebe squirmed. How she would hate being ‘talked’ about. Still, if it meant she could stay she’d endure it.

  ‘Percy!’ Mrs Dibble’s yell could be heard even through the study door. ‘Quickly, quickly, you largy lummocks. It’s coming. Go for Mrs Hay.’

  ‘The baby,’ breathed Phoebe, thrilled. She rushed out of the room past her father and up the stairs before he could stop her.

  The world he had known, he reflected, somewhat dazed, was not only changing, it was rushing headlong. His mother had never allowed Tilly to see either of her brothers less than fully dressed. Now Felicia was nursing men in France; Phoebe was mixing with young soldiers at a ridiculously early age, and Caroline was intent on changing the natural evolution of politics and government. His mother had not let his sister leave the house unaccompanied before she was twenty-one; she had been carefully shielded from the facts of life—though look what had happened, he reminded himself Tilly had rebelled and become a militant suffragette.

  Percy wobbled by on his bicycle, though blessed if he could see what all the excitement was about. It was only another Thorn about to enter the world.

  ‘Harriet, get up here and help me with Agnes.’ Mrs Dibble ran past the Rector and up the stairs, shrieking.

  Sauntering out from the kitchen, Harriet quickened her step as she saw the Rector’s eye on her.

  ‘Get the water boiling,’ Mrs Dibble countermanded her instruction, and Harriet, sighing heavily, returned to the kitchen.

  Up in her old room on the second floor, which she’d insisted on in preference to a bigger one, Agnes lay, clinging through the pain to the thought of Jamie. Her Jamie—waiting to go overseas.

  ‘We’ve got a baby.’

  ‘Young Agnes, is it?’ Nanny Oates stopped counting eggs as Fred ran up the grassy slope of Bankside shouting his momentous news. ‘Boy or girl?’

  Fred thought about this for a moment. ‘It’s a girl. I like girls.’

  Remembering a time when that appeared all too likely, Nanny Oates replied sharply, ‘I thought you were here to help the war effort, Fred.’

  ‘Yes. And the baby.’

  ‘You get yourself to the Wells, young man, then you can have all the time you want to think about babies.’

  Each time he went, Nanny wondered whether he would ever get there, but so far he had always returned with the money carefully tied into his large red handkerchief.

  ‘You know where you’re going today, don’t you? Edward Durrant’s as was, in the Pantiles, and John Brown’s in the High Street. And if he says he’s enough of his own, don’t take no for an answer.’

  He nodded, repeating after her. He couldn’t read, but could learn parrot-fashion.

  ‘And mind you don’t break ’em on the way,’ she called after him. She was doing well. She’d made over three pounds in the three days on the stall outside her cottage, which she persisted in maintaining, just to show young Mr Laurence there were folks in this village prepared to do their bit by buying eggs, even if he were a doubting Thomas. She sat in her basket chair, tapping with her stick and tut-tutting every time someone passed who didn’t stop to buy, even when she knew they kept chickens of their own. Boadicea had been laying well this last week, as if she knew there was a war on. Mary
hadn’t helped much, but what could you expect of a hen called after Bloody Mary? She’d omit her name next time round and skip straight to Good Queen Bess.

  Caroline was in Tunbridge Wells too that Tuesday mornings snatching a few hours off between the Lakes’ barley and the hop stringing. She was visiting her friend, the Honorable Penelope Banning, who was home from Serbia and convalescing after an attack of typhus fever. Penelope had gone out with Lady Paget’s hospital unit in September and had worked in the Skopje hospital.

  As Caroline was shown into the morning room where her friend was sprawled on a chaise longue, she was concerned to see that Penelope still looked very pale.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘No longer smelling of mice.’ Penelope made an effort to joke about the horrible smell associated with the disease. ‘What about you? What news of Reggie?’

  Penelope had been the apple of Reggie’s eye only a year ago, Caroline remembered. She’d been jealous of Penelope then, but how differently she felt now.

  ‘Safe when last I heard. He’s avoided Ypres.’

  ‘Leave?’

  Caroline made a face. ‘No mention of it. The offensives, I suppose.’ She hated being made to think of the next attack, yet again.

  ‘It seems a funny kind of war stuck in trenches planning your next move, while facing the enemy doing just the same. Suppose they both decide to attack on the same day? It’s different in Serbia.’

  Penelope told Caroline that the Serbs were still doggedly defending their country. The first Austrian invasion had failed, and when she had arrived their ill-equipped army was waiting for the next. In December it had come, but been repulsed before it reached Belgrade. For Lady Paget’s unit it seemed like constant war, only theirs was against smallpox, lack of doctors, vermin—and typhus, to which she and countless others, had succumbed.

  ‘Will you go back there when you’re well again?’ Caroline asked.

  ‘Yes. I’m going to limber up with a little work here first, starting this afternoon.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies’ local branch. Sarah Grand is the president—you’ll have read her novels?’

  ‘Of course.’ Caroline was familiar with the controversial Ideala, which had been published anonymously before she was born. ‘I thought you were a WSPU supporter, militant to the last. The Pankhursts for ever.’

  ‘I was, but as they have suspended their fight to win the vote and are all working for the war effort, in their different ways, I might just as well support the NUWSS.’

  ‘Recruiting?’

  Penelope laughed. ‘Much as I’d like to march up and down on a stage singing patriotic songs, I’d scare men, not seduce them.’ Penelope was over six foot tall, but her pallor and thinness might scare them more, Caroline thought. ‘If you read your Courier you’d have seen that they re-opened the clothing depot yesterday at their HQ in Crescent Road. I’m going along to help this afternoon. All good causes. War Relief and the Belgian Relief Fund.’

  ‘But Penelope—’

  ‘Yes?’ An eyebrow arched.

  ‘Clothes?’

  Penelope understood immediately. ‘I know. Just more of the same. Not a real job. In your situation I’d feel the same. Out in Serbia, though, I saw what those old clothes can do for the wounded and civilians shelled out of their homes. It gave me a different perspective.’

  ‘If the Germans broke through at Ypres to the Channel Ports, do you think that could happen here?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They were both quiet for a moment, then Penelope said brightly, ‘I’ll ring for sherry and petit fours, and then we’ll know it will never happen here. Now tell me about Ashden and the Queen Bee of the Hunneypots. How is she?’

  ‘Formidable. I don’t think Ashden is big enough to hold both me and her, Penny.’ Caroline’s despondency suddenly overwhelmed her. ‘The prospect of years under her eye as her daughter-in-law appals me.’

  ‘If you feel like that, why don’t you offer your services to the Pankhurst mob up in London? Did you see in the newspapers they’re advertising for girls to support the big demo in the summer?’

  Caroline had been so preoccupied with the agricultural rota, she hadn’t taken it in. ‘The one in July to demand the right to work? Don’t they want people to march on the day, rather than working for it now? Anyway, I’ve got a job—organising women’s labour here.’

  ‘Ah well, I’m sure I could get you in to help there if you ever need to. We have a London house. In Holland Park. You could live there—Pa won’t mind.’

  ‘What won’t I mind?’ Simon, Lord Banning, in his fifties, with a mild manner which Caroline knew could be deceptive, came into the room. ‘Ah, Miss Lilley. How nice.’

  ‘You won’t mind if Caroline strikes camp in Holland Park?’

  ‘Not at all. There’s only one feudal retainer and his wife there at the moment. but Miss Lilley is resourceful. Like her aunt.’ He raised an interrogative eyebrow.

  Caroline laughed. ‘Aunt Tilly is well. I had a letter yesterday. She and Felicia are both at a base hospital, driving the wounded to hospital ships.’

  ‘I am relieved. Of course you may use the London house whenever you choose. And if you could persuade Penelope to stay there too, I should be eternally in your debt. London might hold more attraction than Tunbridge Wells, and dissuade her from returning to Serbia.’

  Later that evening Penelope, exhausted after a mere three hours of sorting clothes, tackled her father. ‘Why didn’t you tell Caroline about Tilly, Pa?’

  ‘Because Tilly doesn’t want Laurence’s family to hear about Felicia.’

  ‘And what are they doing? You haven’t told me yet. And how do you know? Did she write to you?’

  He hesitated, then shrugged. ‘I heard through my contacts in the War Office that they’ve formed a two-woman team like Mairi Chisholm and Elsie Knocker. They’re treating soldiers in the front line.’

  ‘You mean they’re under fire?’ Penelope was horrified.

  ‘Even the casualty clearing stations seven or eight miles from the front are within the range of heavy shells.’

  Penelope thought for a moment. ‘You’re still being evasive. They’re going out into no man’s land, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He looked at her and continued, ‘You too have done so.’

  ‘I’m older than Felicia.’

  ‘Does age enter into it?’

  ‘But Felicia looks so fragile.’ Penelope could hardly believe that the quiet, reserved girl with her Pre-Raphaelite looks possessed nerve and determination to venture into the front line, let alone beyond it. And Tilly too. She must be nearly fifty. Ancient, like Pa. Not the age to go dashing about on a battlefield. ‘Tilly means a lot to you, doesn’t she?’

  He considered. ‘I suppose—’

  ‘Come on, Pa. Forget you’re a diplomat.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Miss Caroline!’ Startled, Caroline straightened up, feeling the pain in her back. She had thought she was fit after her VAD work, but weeding corn taxed different muscles. She was enjoying herself, though. Last night she had made a recruiting speech for women volunteers in the village hall, with lemonade and buns to get the women talking afterwards, and the response had been good. Twenty new names, and even if a few changed their minds (they always did) it was still encouraging. And weeding corn at Ashden Manor Home Farm had a charm that working in the vegetable garden at the Rectory had never managed to convey to her.

  To her amazement Parker, looking ridiculously out of place in his formal butler’s black in the middle of the field, was addressing her. ‘Lady Hunney presents her compliments, and would be glad to see you at the Dower House.’

  ‘I’ll come at five after work.’

  ‘Now, Miss Lilley, if you please. The farmer has been instructed to free you immediately.’

  Fuming with indignation, she hurried to the Dower House, removing her boots at the porch. N
o comment was passed on her baggy trousers covered with a loose tunic-like gaberdine, though the contrast between Lady Hunney’s elegant tea gown and Caroline’s hartogs (as the village called such comfortable attire) was extreme.

  ‘Have you quite taken leave of your senses, Caroline?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. I wasn’t pleased to be ordered to leave my work by Parker and I obeyed only because I did not wish to involve Farmer Harris, as he is a tenant of yours.’

  ‘I am glad you recalled that fact, Caroline. He is, however, not a tenant of mine, but of Ashden Manor. One day you will be the lady of Ashden, the squire’s wife, his landlord, to whom he is indebted for house, farm and much of his trade. Now apparently he is employing you. What do you imagine will result from that?’

  ‘Nothing, Lady Hunney.’ Caroline kept her voice steady.

  ‘Then you have not the intelligence I assumed you possessed. However, Reginald is—’

  ‘Please do not bring Reggie into this.’

  ‘Reginald is my principal concern. I demand that you give up this work.’

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘Then I shall instruct Mr Harris not to employ you. Moreover, I shall let it be known in the village that I thoroughly disapprove of your being employed by anybody to do menial labour.’

  Caroline tried again. ‘I believe that if England is to win this war, Lady Hunney, it will only be with the help of women, all women, of all classes.’