The Chilbury Ladies' Choir(4)

“What exactly do you have in mind?”

By now I’d guessed he was about to come out with something big, something that would line my pockets well and good. My bet would have been another affair gone wrong (perhaps a high-profile woman involved, maybe someone from the village), so shocked doesn’t describe how I felt when he came out with it.

“Our baby must be a boy.”

There was a pause as I wondered what he meant. He took in my reaction, his eyes scrutinizing me, debating whether I had the requisite bravery, deceit, greed.

“Ours is not the only birth to happen in the village this spring,” he continued, acting like he was giving complex orders on the front line. “And ours must be a boy. If there were a way to ensure that this might be the case—”

The penny dropped. It was outrageous. He wanted me to swap his baby with a baby boy from the village, if his was a girl. I sucked in my lips, working hard to keep the ruddy great smile off my face. I’d take him to the bank for this! But I had to keep calm. Play it for all it was worth.

“I think it would be a tremendous risk, as well as an immense personal compromise,” I clipped.

He leaned forward, dropping his fa?ade for a moment, his eyeballs shooting out, bloody and globular. “But could it be done?”

“Possibly,” I said elusively. But I knew I could do it. I have a vicious herbal potion that induces babies to come forth very promptly, and the village is small, you can get from one house to another in minutes.

“Anyone who could help that to occur would certainly be well compensated,” he said evenly, his fingers toying with his mustache as if it were a battlefield conundrum.

“How well?”

There was a scuffle from outside the door that made him pull back. “We can discuss that at another time and place.” He stood up and went to the window. There was a French door that overlooked a muddle of fields and valleys down to the English Channel, gray and churning like dirty dishwater.

“We’ll meet the Thursday after next at ten in the outhouse in Peasepotter Wood,” he said in a low voice.

“I’ll be there,” I whispered.

“You may leave now,” he added. Then his head shot round and his eyes dug into me with threatening revulsion. “And mention this to no one.”

Only too happy to get away, I spun round and bolted for the door, fiddling with the key in the lock and then closing the door gently behind me, before sallying out into the thronging hall. My stride widened as I swooped in and out of the black-clad mourners, the uniforms, the nosy neighbors. I marched straight out of the front door without so much as a by-your-leave. People were still arriving in the expansive driveway, so I had to refrain from skipping for joy as I trotted briskly back to the village.

Once I was at my drab little home, I gave a well-earned cheer, throwing my arms up into the air and laughing with utter delight. This is going to work.

I’ll show you that you can forgive me for what happened with Bill, and for taking the money when we ran off. How was I to know he’d grab the money and vanish as soon as he could?

We can be happy again, you and me, like when we were young. Funny, you never think how lucky you are until it’s all whisked away, first Mum dying, then staying with disgusting Uncle Cyril when Dad was in jail, shut in his attic like slaves. But enough of that. We’ll put the past behind us, Clara.

It’s time to gird our loins. There are two other women in the village who are expecting around the same time as Mrs. Winthrop. Droopy Mrs. Dawkins from the farm is on her fourth, so that should be simple. Less easy would be the goody-two-shoes schoolteacher Hattie Lovell, whose husband is away at sea. Hattie is chummy with that niggling nurse, Mrs. Tilling, who’s done the midwifery course and sees fit to poke her nose into my birthing business. Every time I go round to Hattie’s, she’s there, hanging around like a superior matron, saying she’s going to be midwife at the birth. She doesn’t understand. This village is only big enough for one midwife.

I’ll write again after the meeting with the Brigadier. Who would have known such an upper-class gentleman could stoop so low? I’m going to tap him for the biggest money he’s ever known. I won’t let you down this time, Clara. You’ll get the money I owe you, I swear.

Edwina





Saturday, 30th March, 1940

They announced on the wireless that keeping a diary in these difficult times is excellent for the stamina, so I’ve decided to write down all my thoughts and dreams in my old school notebook. Nobody is allowed to read it, except perhaps when I’m old or dead, and then it should be published in a book, I think.





Important Things About Me


I am thirteen years old and want to be a singer when I grow up, wearing glorious gowns and singing before adoring audiences in London and Paris, and maybe even New York, too. I think I will handle the fame well and become renowned for being terribly levelheaded.

I live in an antiquated village full of old buildings that always smell of damp and mothballs. There is a green with a duck pond, a shop, a village hall, and a medieval church with an overgrown graveyard. The church is where we used to have choir until the Vicar decided we couldn’t go on without any men. I’ve been pestering him to change his mind, but he’s simply not listening. In the meantime I’ve been trying to set up a choir at the school. I used to go to a boarding school, but they evacuated it to Wales and Mama didn’t want me to go. So now our butler, Proggett, has to drive me five miles to school in Litchfield every day. It’s not a bad place, except no one wants to join my choir.