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Angela noticed Jessie’s expression reveal all too clearly that he was pondering what she and Tommy thought about each other, and so as a distraction she quickly reminded Jessie again of lots of the things she had learnt in the library about ponies, which seemed to make much more sense now that they had Milburn standing in front of them
When she had run out of useful titbits to share, she was relieved to see her tactic had worked, as Jessie said that he wondered if Milburn was well behaved when ridden, as he rather fancied a go.
At this Milburn gave Jessie what seemed like such a look of disgust, followed by a shake of her head that jangled the metal bit in her mouth and set her springy mane and forelock bouncing as if to say No-o-o-o at the very thought, and both children couldn’t do anything but laugh.
‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ said Angela, and Milburn nodded.
‘Yes, she seems to be,’ Jessie agreed, although the moment was immediately somewhat spoilt as Milburn swiftly dipped her nose into the wicker basket of a passing woman and nimbly lifted out a greaseproof-paper-wrapped sandwich, much to the ire of the woman and the embarrassment of the children.
Jessie wrestled the package from Milburn’s mouth, and then he offered it back to its owner, who took one look at the slobbered paper and the indent of the pony’s teeth and said crossly, ‘Those were fer my Bert, but ’e won’t want them now, will ’e? An wot’ll he ’ave fer his dinner now, an’ ’e’s on blackout checkin’ after? T’ pony had better have ’em, I s’ppose, an’ mind you keep more control of ’im in future. There’s a war on, you know.’
The affronted woman stalked away, and Jessie and Angela exchanged glances and then as one they looked accusingly at Milburn, who was concentrating very hard on the package in Jessie’s hand.
‘I suppose I ought to have paid more attention to Milburn,’ admitted Jessie, sounding a little guilty.
‘Poor Burt,’ said Angela, and the mere mention of him made the children hoot.
Jessie unwrapped the sandwiches, which had reconstituted egg as the filling. He and Angela gave the top one to Milburn, who snaffled it greedily, but they decided the bottom one wasn’t too squished for themselves to eat and so they shared it quickly, keen to finish before the others came back.
They talked then of the posters they could see up, seeing the irony of a poster urging a visit to the Yorkshire dales smack bang alongside a poster of a British Tommy questioning ‘Is your journey really necessary?’ Angela angled her chair slightly differently so that she could see the other side of the station’s entrance, where there was another poster urging people to bring their own cups and glasses to railway refreshment rooms as they were often running short, but the children couldn’t find much to interest them or to joke about in this last poster.
After what seemed hours, there was the sound of an ancient puffing billy chugging slowly into the station, at which Milburn held her head very high, her small ears so pointed towards where she could hear the unfamiliar sound coming from, that their darker tips looked to be almost touching.
As the sound of the final burst of steam from the train’s engine gave way to the noise of doors opening and the passengers alighting, Angela started to say, ‘It won’t be long before Lar—’ when Connie’s unmistakeable voice rang out in a loud and high-pitched yelp that sounded as heartfelt as it was hard to interpret.
It was such an unexpected outburst that Jessie immediately felt queasy as these days, like so many other people, he tended to overreact to any unexpected shock, knowing that it could herald bad news, and he swung towards Angela, whereupon the children stared at each other with worried faces.
Then Jessie sprang forward as he dropped the lead rope to Milburn’s halter so that it dangled in the road. Uncaring and with his thoughts of paying more attention to the pony completely forgotten, he fairly pelted towards the station platform to run to his twin’s aid.
Angela apprehensively watched him go, and then as he raced inside and turned towards the platforms she saw him halt suddenly, his mouth open in obvious shock. Her heart lurched more stomach-churningly than before, and a rising panicky feeling made her tingly and jittery.
Jessie ran forward again abruptly, but not before Angela had seen his face break into a tremendous grin as he stretched both arms out as wide as they could go.
He does seem very pleased that Larry is coming back to Tall Trees to be with us all, thought Angela, the sickly feeling quickly dissolving and falling away.
It wasn’t long before the reason for the excitement of Connie and Jessie became clear.
Barbara and Ted had come all the way to Harrogate on a surprise visit to see the twins, and to catch up with Peggy and Holly too, of course. They had travelled up to Yorkshire from London on the train along with Larry.
Neither of the twins would remove their arms to let their parents go from their hugs, they were so excited to see them.
Barbara and Ted had spent a weekend with them at the end of January, as their train tickets had been funded for that journey by the government.
Understandably, since then it had felt a very long four months for the ten-year-olds to be without their mother and father, instead having to make do with letters, and – joy! – on Easter Sunday, even a telephone call made from the Jolly for Barbara and Ted to say they hoped that Mabel’s Easter Egg hunt of hand-decorated hard-boiled eggs hidden in the garden was going to be fun.
‘My, look how you two have grown!’ said Barbara now, as despite having a shopping basket hooked into her elbow, she managed to put an arm around both of her children to pull them close.
‘You’re nearly as tall as yer ma, both of yer!’ Ted added, standing close. He was naturally a more reserved person than Barbara, but the tremor in his voice gave away how happy he was to see his children, and then he allowed himself a gentle pat of hello on each of the twins’ shoulders, just so that they knew how deeply he cared for them.
Jessie and Connie were both too overcome to do anything more than grin at each of their parents with glee, as they both turned around to hug their father too, their eyes shining bright with the unexpected thrill of what had just happened.
Jessie, who was more observant than Connie, noticed a few wrinkles at the corners of Barbara’s eyes that had not been there before the war, and some white hairs glinting in Ted’s short hair. He thought too that both of his parents seemed a bit smaller and very slightly shabbier than they had before, but Jessie was wise enough to know that maybe he had grown a little and that these days nobody could buy new clothes for best as often as they had done previously, and so most people were making do and mending to preserve outfits and shoes for as long as possible.
Barbara and Ted felt just as overcome, although they were making a better fist of hiding their exuberant feelings. They really missed having their children at home, but Ted was convinced that the bombs would soon be falling on London and so Connie and Jessie were much less likely to come to physical harm, or worse (although that didn’t bear thinking about) if they stayed billeted in Harrogate. And although Barbara probably would have brought the children back to Bermondsey if it had been left up to her, she trusted Ted’s opinion and knew that he wouldn’t be so insistent if he didn’t really believe that Jubilee Street was going to be very vulnerable to aerial attack.
Angela had no option other than to wait for them all to walk back to her, while she sat marooned in her wheelchair on its wheels as she noticed how alike Peggy and Barbara were, and how Jessie favoured his father’s colouring.
Milburn’s lead rope was still hanging downwards but the pony hadn’t taken the opportunity to test her freedom and instead had edged over so that she was standing beside Angela, casting curious looks towards the new arrivals. Then the small mare shook her nose forwards and backward several times as if she rather approved of Ted looking strong and muscular in his Sunday-best suit and Barbara smart and pretty, with the sunshine highlighting her freshly pin-curled hair.
‘Blimey!’ yelled Larry, the second he spied the pony. And then a little more quietly but with an unmistakeable tone of wonder in his voice, ‘Blimey O’Reilly.’
Milburn looked as if she were pretty much thinking the same thing as Larry headed towards her.
‘Larry, language please,’ Barbara reprimanded.
She might as well have saved her breath as Larry looked around at his pals with a massive grin and then simply repeated ‘Blimey!’ again, although this time in the most excited tone of all, as if he were thinking of all sorts of things they could all get up to now that they looked as if they might have the cheeky-looking Milburn with them as a partner in crime.
Milburn’s mischievous glint in her eye seemed to say that yes, she agreed with Larry, and that they only had to say the word and she’d be ready and willing for all manner of fun and frolics over the summer. Whatever japes they could think of would be all right with her, yes sirree.
Larry appeared to everyone as if he had grown taller too, although his scrawnier frame, sunken cheeks, shadows smudged under his eyes and generally a more put-upon demeanour were a far cry from the bonny boy who had left them at Tall Trees earlier in the year.
As Tommy went to grab hold of the handles to push Angela’s chair, Aiden picked up Milburn’s rope, Ted divided everyone’s luggage between his two hands, and Larry seemed unable to take his eyes off Milburn. And then he said as if he hadn’t uttered anything a matter of seconds ago, ‘Wot the bloomin’ ’eck is that?’
‘It’s a pony, dimwit. A pony,’ said Tommy, laughing. ‘And when Father isn’t using her, she’s ours to do with what we want.’
‘Blimey. Blimey O’Reilly.’
‘Lang—’ said Barbara, and then gave a defeated smile. ‘Oh, what’s the point!’
Ted laughed and pulled Barbara close to him for a moment, and then they broke apart, eager to hear what the twins had been up to.
And with that, the odd mismatch of people trooped back to Tall Trees.
Mabel and Roger knew already that Barbara and Ted were coming to visit, although they hadn’t given as much as the tiniest hint about this to anybody else, even Peggy, as Barbara had telephoned the previous afternoon to say that she was terribly sorry for the short notice, but she wondered if it were all right if she and Ted could stay over for a day or two at Tall Trees.
Mabel told Barbara how wonderful it would be and that the twins, and Peggy, would be over the moon.
Then there had been the usual friendly argy-bargy between the women over the financial arrangements, with Barbara offering a payment and Mabel refusing, and Barbara insisting, and Mabel refusing, and so forth, after which Barbara had begged Mabel and Roger to keep their visit a surprise.
Mabel had agreed, but actually it proved to be a trickier thing to keep quiet about than she had expected.
For first thing that morning Mabel had almost been caught by Peggy carrying fresh sheets and clean towels across the back yard on her way to sort out the generously proportioned room above the stables that Peggy and Gracie had once shared and where Barbara and Ted would now be sleeping.
A quick-thinking Mabel had had to dart into the pantry to hide as Peggy then spent what felt to Mabel to be an inordinate age standing just on the other side of the pantry door in the kitchen getting herself and Holly ready to leave the house and head over to June Blenkinsop’s. At one point, Peggy even asked Holly if she should take June the bag of currants she had for her that were – naturally – in the pantry, causing Mabel’s heart to do a flip, and then a double-flip as if in answer.
Holly didn’t say anything in reply – well, that wasn’t surprising given her tender age – but she did let out a cheery gurgle.
At last Mabel was able to breathe an audible sigh of relief when Peggy decided that the dratted currants could wait for another day as June probably wouldn’t be doing any of this sort of baking on a Sunday as she’d be concentrating on getting large trays of cottage pies and Lancashire hotpots ready for the coming week. Finally Peggy got around to pushing the pram out through the back door and weaving it through the yard and onto the garden path to the road.
This was a huge relief because, try as she might, Mabel hadn’t been able to think of a convincing reason why she was hiding next to the large bowl of eggs from their hens at the bottom of the garden and a hessian sack of potatoes with its top rolled over so that the teddies were easy to get to. And Mabel knew that Peggy would almost definitely have smelt a rat of the Barbara-and-Ted-arriving variety if she had caught her sneaking about in the pantry with an armful of clean laundry and no plausible reason for doing so.
Now, as the others would all be making their way back from the station, Mabel only just had time to find Peggy a handful of clean hankies following the telephone call with Bill, and to make her cup of tea. She’d sneaked a surreptitious peek at a soggy and spent Peggy, and couldn’t decide if Barbara’s imminent arrival was a good or a bad thing. It could go either way, to judge by the look of her, Mabel thought.
Peggy remained closeted still in Roger’s study with a desolate expression on her face, staring with unfocused eyes into the distance, obviously dazed and emotionally exhausted after her unheralded display of temper following her highly wrought outburst.
Although Holly had been bawling, Mabel wasn’t sure that Peggy had even heard her daughter’s cries, as for the very first time her doting mother hadn’t raced across the corridor to attend to her, and this neglect had made Holly wail even more loudly.
Now, across the way in the kitchen and jollied along by Roger, Holly had finally ceased crying although she remained restless and a little snivelly, her eyelashes still wet with tears, following such a rude awakening from her nap caused by the clatter of things hitting the floor in the study.
Once the baby’s wails had abated, a too casual-seeming Roger replaced Holly back in her sleeping drawer and then quickly made himself scarce, leaving Mabel to pick the baby up again when Holly started to grizzle, as she did almost immediately.
Mabel had no choice other than to walk around the kitchen, jiggling Holly in her arms as she showed her what was in the kitchen cabinets, and the eggs and potatoes in the pantry, in an effort to prevent her from returning to her full-blown wailing of a few minutes earlier.
Holly was surprisingly heavy for such a little thing and she obviously wasn’t very convinced that what was in the various cupboards was very much for Mabel to boast about, and so Mabel was relieved to hear the sound of those returning to Tall Trees heading across the back yard.
The baby immediately stopped grumbling, at last fully engaged in her surroundings, and quickly swung her head with interest towards the door from the back yard into the kitchen to see who might be about to come in.
Mabel could hear Aiden pulling the bolt to the stable door across and then encouraging Milburn inside as he told Larry where the hay and straw was, and she saw Tommy push Angela’s chair to the back door. Mabel noticed the Ross family huddled together as they gave Tommy room to help Angela inside.
For a moment Mabel wondered at Ted Ross allowing Tommy to push Angela what looked like all the way back from the station to judge by Tommy’s pink face, but then she thought that actually for Tommy to have a bit of responsibility and to do something for somebody else wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, the episode to do with his bullying and the orchard affair being still rather a raw memory for all the Braithwaites, although the other children never seemed to refer to it.
Barbara bustled into the kitchen, which was smelling deliciously of the barm cakes baking for their dinner and Barbara could see what looked like a giant mixing bowl with bread dough proving on a warm part of the range.
Connie and Jessie stayed out in the yard in order to tug Ted, once he had set all the luggage down, good-naturedly across the yard and over to see for himself where Milburn was housed. Barbara undid her headscarf with one hand as with the other she plonked the wicker basket full of small thank-you gifts for Mabel – some homemade biscuits, a couple of new tea towels, a vest for Tommy and some hankies, several pork chops, some juicy-looking carrots and a very late dark-green Savoy cabbage that the caterpillars had only had the merest chomp on the outside leaves of – down on the rather battered kitchen table that had obviously seen many years of faithful service.
She and Mabel smiled in greeting at one another, and then Barbara raised her eyebrows in a quiet query as to where her sister Peggy might be.
Mabel put a finger in front of her mouth to signal silence, and then with Holly still in her arms she edged over to her guest and then stage-whispered in Barbara’s ear, ‘She’ll be jiggered, Barbara. There’s jus’ been an awful ding-dong on the telephone not more than twenty or so minutes ago betwixt her an’ Bill. She’s ’avin’ a quiet moment jus’ at present in t’ study wi’ a cup o’ tea to set ’erself to rights, but there no denyin’ it were right bad. She’ll be glad yer ’ere.’
‘Oh my goodness!’ Barbara hissed quietly back. ‘That’s unlike them. Poor Peggy… I can guess what he’s done, I suppose.’
Mabel said she hadn’t asked Peggy what the row was about, but she thought she’d heard Peggy moan the name Maureen as she had sobbed in her arms in the aftermath of the argument.
Then the two women shook their head at the thought of what was happening to a lot of couples during their enforced separations. Many relationships were suffering badly, and both of them were pretty sure that Peggy wouldn’t be the only woman in the land who had just had a big barney with her husband over another woman, while many men away from home drove themselves to distraction with dark thoughts of what their wives might be getting up to back on the home front without them. It wasn’t an ideal situation, no matter how one tried to look at it.
Barbara then saw that Holly was looking curiously towards her aunty and waving an arm in her direction, opening and closing her fingers, and so Barbara whispered to Mabel, ‘May I?’
With a rather relieved smile Mabel promptly handed her over, and after deeply inhaling the familiar scent of the young baby and then gently touching Holly on the head with her lips in a feather-light caress of hello, Barbara clutched her affectionately to her chest and went to find her sister.
She was taken aback a moment later to see how large and black the pupils in Peggy’s eyes appeared, and how pale her face was.
Peggy was totally still as she gazed with unseeing eyes out of the study window and down towards the hen coops on the far side of the garden, with the undrunk cup of tea by her elbow, and she didn’t notice that it was her sister who had come into the study.
It was only when Barbara said gently, ‘Peggy, my darling, whatever’s happened?’ that Peggy turned to face her.
For an instant Peggy’s brown eyebrows wrinkled in incomprehension and she looked confused as she gazed at Barbara.
And then she simply flung herself at her sister, leaving Barbara only a moment to move Holly out of the way. As Peggy broke once more into sobs, Barbara was able to feel hot tears on her neck as Peggy held her close in a vice-like grip. Barbara stood still as a rock and pulled her sister close.
The sisters didn’t say anything for a while, as Peggy was too upset to speak, and Barbara thought it best that this new wave of emotion be allowed to crest and then die of its own accord.
After a while Barbara contented herself with repeating ‘Sssssh, there now, there now. Sssssh, there now’ in the same way that she had comforted Jessie and Connie when they were colicky as babies.
Holly made some adorable snuffling noises and reached pudgy fingers towards her mother’s hair, but Peggy didn’t look at her and so Holly turned towards Barbara with a puzzled expression, causing Barbara to give her a jiggle of acknowledgement with her other arm and a smile, as she knew the baby would be feeling unsettled at these unfamiliar goings-on and the strange sounds coming from her mother.
When Peggy’s grip on her sister had reduced to less of a stranglehold, Barbara said, ‘Peggy, dear, we’ll have a long talk very soon, I promise. I want to hear all about it, really I do. But first why don’t you have a lie down and have a little rest? Take Holly up with you as to me she’s looking as if she still needs a bit more of a doze after her lunch, and then I’ll come and find you when I’ve got everyone else sorted and have caught up with Connie and Jessie. How does that sound, dear?’
Tiredly, Peggy untangled herself and then nodded a damp and exhausted smile of agreement, before she quietly slipped upstairs with her daughter cleaved tightly to her bosom. She felt done in, and now she could hear Connie and Jessie’s happy voices outside, she wanted to make sure that her tear-marked face wouldn’t dampen the party mood that was sweeping the rest of Tall Trees with Larry being back with them, and the pleasure of the unexpected visit from Barbara and Ted.
With a concerned expression, Barbara watched the sway of her sister’s disappearing world-weary steps with a tremendous pang of sympathy and trepidation, and then she sighed in empathy before she consciously made herself look happy as she turned to retrace her steps outside and find her husband and the twins.
Chapter Seven (#ulink_279031be-2176-58a7-a3e2-03006c269caa)
Ted was full of surprises, it seemed.
‘Mother, you’ll never believe it,’ squeaked Connie breathily, her cheeks red with excitement as her mother joined her family. ‘But Father can drive a trap! And he’s going to teach us. He knows all about ponies, and he’s going to teach us everything!’
‘Oh, he can drive a trap, can he?’ Barbara raised an amused eyebrow in the direction of her husband, who winked in response. This was news to her, as was Connie’s use of the formal-sounding ‘mother’, but she supposed this was a sign of Connie getting older as perhaps ‘mama’ or ‘mummy’ seemed babyish, especially in front of the other children.
Ted grinned back at Barbara, causing her to shoot him a rueful, only half-amused grin in return. He’d never mentioned to his wife that as a child he had helped out at the local coal merchants, so much so that by the age of ten he had been allowed, after much begging, to take the reins on the delivery cart whenever he wasn’t at school.
Barbara prided herself on knowing all there was to know about Ted, and to learn this news so hot on the heels of discovering that something dire had happened with Bill that Peggy had had no idea about and therefore had been unprepared for, she felt now slightly peculiar and wrong-footed by Ted’s admission, harmless though it was.
The children were mightily impressed with Ted’s insouciant wink, however, to the extent that they were all pulling a variety of comical faces as they tried to outdo each other in the winking stakes, with Tommy and Larry trying the hardest, but Tommy getting the eventual thumbs-up from the others for a particularly showy double wink at the same time tipping his forefinger to his brow.
‘Okay, you lot,’ Barbara interrupted their fun, ‘let’s go in for some food as I believe Mabel is setting the table and has the kettle on, and then we’ll see if Roger minds Ted taking you all out later in the trap.’ Barbara sounded quite firm as she looked around at the children and pulled her best delicately scalloped beige cardigan together over her chest as if she meant business.
As one, Ted and the children all looked a bit crestfallen as they had clearly wanted to go out in the trap right away, but then they realised that Barbara wasn’t saying a firm no as such, but just that Roger had to give his seal of approval first.
Tommy summed up their thoughts with, ‘Let’s go in an’ see Pa – ’e’s always ready for ’is dinner, and I’ll bet ’e’ll like a bit of teachin’ too ’ow t’ ’andle t’ trap proper.’
And indeed when Roger learned that Ted had some experience with horses and would be very happy to spend a bit of time showing them what to do with Milburn, there was an unmistakable sigh of relief bubbling up from below his white dog collar. He’d not yet tried to go out in the trap on his own, not least as he wasn’t sure he could quite remember how to put the harness on Milburn or how to attach the trap to all the harness gubbins, although these were admissions that he didn’t particularly care to make in front of all the children.
Dinner was eaten hastily, with no one mentioning anything about Peggy and Holly not being there, most probably because it was only Barbara and Ted who noticed, and they contented themselves with acknowledging the absence of the two Delberts with the exchange of silent but nonetheless telling looks.
There was a scrag end of mutton stew Peggy had prepared the evening before, that was surprisingly tasty as she was picking up some good tips for flavoursome food over at June Blenkinsop’s, and Mabel had eked it out to make sure there was enough as of course she couldn’t say to Peggy that her sister and Ted would be joining them, seeing as this was a surprise. It was served along with fluffy dumplings and the unexpected gift of the Savoy cabbage to go with the runner beans that Roger was very proud he’d grown.
Once everyone had wiped their plates clean with a still-warm barm cake and sat back replete, Barbara announced that she wasn’t going to partake of the pony and trap session, which made the twins put on deliberately dejected faces in an attempt to get their mother to change her mind. But Barbara held firm, although she tried to sweeten the pill by saying that for this meal, as a special treat, the children could be let off their table-clearing and washing-up duties as she would put the kitchen to rights and everyone else could go out into the yard to practise tacking up Milburn. ‘Go on, out you scoot, and leave me to it,’ she said, waving a tea towel around as if to scurry them outside.
‘Please come and watch Daddy with us,’ said Jessie. Barbara noticed the ‘daddy’.
‘Oh, we so wanted to show you Milburn,’ Connie wheedled.
Barbara wavered for a moment but then she thought of Peggy, and held firm, their pleas being to no avail.
‘I’ve seen her and she’s a very eye-catching pony, right enough, and I’ll be there tomorrow when no doubt you will want to repeat it all again. I’m sure Milburn won’t mind if I watch you then. And I promise that tomorrow I will even let you drive me along in the trap, if it’s still sunny and Ted thinks you know what you’re doing,’ said Barbara. ‘But right now, there is something else that I really need to see to instead, and so you all vamoose.’
The children knew that Barbara never reneged on a promise and so they decided to make the best of it as it was really good to have Ted there to spend some time with. Mabel stepped in to ease the moment further with a vigorous call of ‘last one out there’s a sissy’ ringing in their ears as she bolted out of the back door before the children, with Roger hot on her heels. The children all scampered off happily enough to watch, along with Milburn’s quizzical expression, Ted untangle the harness as he muttered that they must hang it up properly when not being used, and not leave it in a heap like they had as to do so was to risk the leather perishing, before reminding them how it should be put on the pony.
