The Victory Garden(45)

“It’s a very delicious fish pie, Mrs Trelawney,” Daisy said quietly. “I really like it.”

“Well, I’ve done my best with what is at hand,” the cook conceded. “And there is a good apple pie to follow, from our own apples, mark you.”

After lunch, the weather was fine and bright, and they walked up on to the moor. Alice cried out at the sight of the wild ponies appearing on the ridge above then galloping off as the women approached. The heather was in bloom, and the hillside glowed magenta and purple. When they had climbed a way, they stood, looking back. The village, nestled in its hollow, looked like the wooden toy village Emily used to play with. Smoke rose from some of the chimneys. Around it, a patchwork of fields, divided by hedges or stone walls, stretched away into the distance, dotted with white sheep and cream-coloured cows. Far off, they could see more villages, a town and then the haze that crept inland from the sea.

“This is the life, eh?” Alice said. “You don’t know how much better I feel now I’m not breathing in all that smoke and dust. I used to wake up every morning coughing. My mum died of bronchitis or something like it. Coughed all the time. I wish I could have brought her here.”

“I like it, too,” Daisy said.

Emily was looking around, taking in every aspect of the view—the green of the fields and woods, the purple of the hillside, the white dots of sheep. In Australia, there will just be red earth, she thought. Would she miss this green and pleasant land? Then she thought of Robbie, his arms around her, making her feel safe and loved. It will all be worth it, she told herself.

After a simple cold supper, they walked down to the village.

“Don’t you have to join the old lady for sherry?” Alice asked her.

“It’s my day off,” Emily replied. “I think I’m free to do what I want.” All the same, she felt a pang of guilt that Lady Charlton might be sitting all alone, waiting for her in the big empty house.

The pub was shut on Sunday, but the women of the village had assembled on the village green, sitting on the benches below the Celtic cross. Some of them were knitting. Several small children were chasing each other with squeals of delight. The two old men were sitting apart, smoking pipes. Bats flitted through pink twilight. It was a perfect rural picture, Emily thought, until you realized there were no men there, no boys older than about twelve. They were introduced to the women—the shopkeeper and the wives of several farm labourers—and Alice introduced Emily to Mrs Soper, the blacksmith’s wife. These women already seemed to know a lot about them, thanks to Alice and Daisy’s nightly pub visits.

After a few polite words, the women reverted to local matters. Whose brother or son had come home; whose had not.

“What about your man?” Nell Lacey was asked. “When is he getting out of that hospital?”

“Not for a while,” Nell said. “They have to make a wooden leg for him, and his lungs have to improve before they’ll let him out.”

“When do you plan on going up to London to visit him again?” one of the younger women asked.

Nell frowned. “Who would run the pub if I left? We have to make a living somehow, don’t we?”

“At least you have a man who’ll be coming home,” the blacksmith’s wife said bitterly. “What about me? I miss my Charlie something terrible. And it’s not just missing him and learning to live without him, is it? I want to know how I’m expected to carry on without him. Who is going to shoe the horses and mend the farm implements? That’s what I want to know.”

“I know, Mrs Soper. I’ve been thinking the same thing. Mine may be coming home eventually, but how am I going to take care of him?” Nell Lacey asked. “I am already run off my feet without having to nurse him in between manhandling the barrels.”

There was an awkward silence.

“Are there no men left in the village?” Emily asked. “Apart from the two over there?”

“There’s the reverend,” the blacksmith’s wife said. “But he and his missus keep themselves to themselves, except when she’s organizing something for charity. And then there’s Mr Patterson at the school. But he don’t mix much, do he? Not a great one for conversation.”

“So you’re living in the cottage, are you?” one of the women asked. “How are you liking it?”

“It’s not too bad,” Alice said. “Not exactly like home, but we’re surviving.”

“Have you seen any ghosts yet?” the woman persisted, giving her neighbour a dig in the ribs.

“There aren’t any ghosts, Edie. Don’t go scaring them like that,” Nell Lacey said.

“Of course there are ghosts,” the woman went on. “Don’t they say that woman runs screaming over the moor? That one that was hanged for being a witch?”

“That’s just an old wives’ tale,” Nell said.

“Well, that’s what we are, old wives, isn’t it?” the woman said, chuckling.

“No we’re not. We’re widows, most of us, aren’t we?”

Again they lapsed into silence.

“How are you getting on with the old lady then?” The young wife broke the silence, holding a squirming toddler on her lap. “I find her terrifying.”

“Emily here gets along with her just fine,” Alice said. “She’s invited to take sherry every evening.”