Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves Read online

  Miss Boston and Miss Hargreaves

  * * *

  RACHEL MALIK

  Contents

  Prologue

  Starlight

  1: Seeing Double, June 1940

  2: The Girl in the Porch

  3: Elsie Unked

  4: Rene, Vicky and Pearl

  5: At the White Horse

  6: Battle of the Atlantic (Starlight Front), 1941

  7: The Changing View

  Moving On

  8: Peripatetic

  9: Wheal Rock

  Ernest

  10: The Visitor

  11: Trouble

  12: Letter from Holloway

  At Winchester

  13: The Eagle Hotel

  14: The Green Hat

  15: From Spinster to Widow

  16: In the Dock

  17: Land of Water

  Epilogue

  Historical Note

  Follow Penguin

  Prologue

  A woman standing at a window, looking out at the fields beyond. The window is open and the cool of the morning and cold of the room meet on her face. Outside, the morning is coming clear, another good day. The woman leans out to get a better view. If you were passing by the house, you might see her in the casement window. If, for no one comes up here on a whim. There is a track, narrow, cut through a wood, but it peters out before it reaches the gate. The cottage has the name of an old mine – Wheal Rock – of which only the brick chimney remains. Very occasionally a stranger comes up the track, curious, having seen the chimney from the road, but they rarely linger – it feels like private land.

  But if you did get as far as the cottage you would see the figure of a woman at the upstairs window, looking out, half a shadow; the light catches her thick, springy hair. You might notice the black cat sitting in the window like china and the neat, well-stocked garden.

  Closer, and you would see that she is waiting. There is something of that slightly fidgety intensity, that unwilling patience. A good deal of her life has been spent waiting, one way and another. She’ll carry on waiting, but from today the waiting will be different. And this bedroom window is her lookout too, because she’s also watching. Her eyes scan gate and hedge, searching for anything untoward or unwelcome: trespasser, stranger, animals out of place. It’s an old, old habit – there is always the possibility of incursion, danger. She is on her mettle, steely.

  Her face has been called pretty, but more often pleasing and fine. She has been called soft too, but with her head in mind. She has also been called a fine figure of a woman. This seems to describe her better. And yet. Few would dispute the fineness and match of her features, but there is something about her expression, the way she looks at things, people too, that gives you pause to wonder if any of these phrases really describe her at all.

  * * *

  A second woman with a cardboard suitcase, standing alone on the cobbles. The door in the great wooden gate has already shut behind her, a London morning rushes by ahead. The clock has just struck eight – symbolism – and she smiles to herself. She doesn’t need to be told this is a new day.

  She starts to walk briskly towards the road, struggling a little with the case; it is clear that she isn’t expecting anyone to meet her. Almost ready to cast off into the moving street, she turns to look back at the building behind her, how big it is. The thick stone walls, the narrow windows, the great wooden gate with the little door – all this time and she’s never seen it from the outside. She takes a deep breath, turns left and strides onward into the morning, thankful there is no one to see.

  She used a map to memorize the first stage of today’s journey: a half-mile walk to the station on the Holloway Road. Everything about her looks grey, streaky, apart from the buses; it isn’t much of a prospect. She swaps bag and suitcase and continues, there is an edginess to her; she is excited but she wants to keep it bottled up. She passes a cafe, busy, steamed up – one of the guards told her they did a good breakfast – but she doesn’t want to linger here, not while she is still so close. She turns right with relief on to another, busier road, the wires thick above her, lots of shops, so many commands to see and read – Sylvia’s Dresses, Woolworth’s, Abbotts Shoes, Parr’s Stationers. She feels green and light-headed from all the space. A tube train rumbles somewhere below her. She pauses, looks into a shop window and finds herself – shallow, faint, all angles. Bare-headed, she feels exposed, but many of the women walking past, and men too, seem to have given up on hats; if anything makes her stand out, it won’t be that. She carries on looking into the glass, watching the people on the street as they stride or dawdle, paying careful attention to what they are wearing. It’s a good thing it’s a working day: her dark jacket with its neat collar and buttons is like a dozen others. She looks back at herself again, more carefully this time – it isn’t vanity, it’s just possible someone might remember her from the papers. She doesn’t wish to attract sideways glances. She straightens her collar – in other circumstances she would be quite pleased with her appearance. This is the first time she has worn her own clothes in nearly two years.

  * * *

  The first woman is still standing at the window, watching, waiting, remembering.

  ‘I liked Wheal Rock from the first,’ she had said. This was recorded in her police statement. ‘I liked it because it was quiet, because it reminded me of a place where I lived for a long time, the place that I grew up.’ The young WPC who wrote this down was uncomprehending, but she wrote it down anyway.

  Starlight

  * * *

  1.

  Seeing Double, June 1940

  She stood at the window, looking out at the fields beyond, her fields. The calves were up by the gate, nosing each other, waiting for her – still unsure of their new routine. The great horse chestnut tree was swaying, she could hear it from here, feel the cool of its shade. In Fair Field, the oats were just starting to pale – her oats. The rest of the view was blocked by the tallboy. She had dragged it in last night. It was badly splintered at the back, but at least it was empty. She carried on standing at the window, looking out, waiting.

  Tomorrow this view wouldn’t belong to her – not quite. It would belong to the girl: for as long as she was here. The girl was arriving this afternoon at about three. Elsie was dreading it.

  She looked slowly, carefully, around the room. The walls were bare, but she’d found a strip of matting and brought in the blue jug and basin. She’d even put some flowers on the mantel. The changes made the room more homely, but she wasn’t sure she wanted that. It wouldn’t do for the girl to get too comfortable. She wondered which bed the girl would choose. All four beds remained, and the drawers and wardrobe were crammed with clothes (the wardrobe reeked of lavender when you opened it). Well, the girl would have the tallboy and that would have to do: she couldn’t be bringing so very much with her. The land girl.

  Elsie had seen them in Lambourn in groups, walking three or four abreast, primped, on their half day she supposed. Uniforms unpicked and resewn far too tight. Old Cole had half a dozen now and she’d heard them too, hollering one to another, across the fields. Now one was coming here, it was all arranged. Only one, just one. One couldn’t be too bad, and she needed the help. She had made the request.

  Elsie looked out across the fields again. The calves were still waiting, a little restless now. The new postmistress cycled slowly up Sheepdrove – she wobbled as she went by the house. Elsie blinked and turned away from the window all of a sudden; she felt shy being in here.

  On the landing she closed the door carefully and went downstairs; downstairs still felt her own. She made herself some tea – she couldn’t eat anything – wiped the tab
le and mashed up some scraps. Then, instead of sitting in the kitchen, she carried her cup through to the sitting room so she could listen in. Since the war had started, it seemed that there was much more music on the wireless, all those songs, all those oboes and clarinets played by Millicents and Joys. The voices that came through the wireless were the only ones in the house now, apart from her own. For they were all gone: two sisters married and the third moved away; three brothers, dead such a long time ago – their names engraved on the memorial to prove it; her mother and her father as well. Sometimes it seemed that her sisters were ghosts too, and not glimpsed since the war started. This war.

  The voices called her back – the news had started, and as so often these days the war wasn’t going well. Those quiet, clear voices from the Home Service tried to put on a good shine, but she knew. Foreign names she had once read and stumbled over – Arras, Armentières – spoken smoothly now over the wireless. They echoed in the sitting room, half familiar, along with other names she didn’t know or had forgotten, just recently Dunkirk. Our brave boys had been brought home safely. Triumph seized from disaster’s jaws. Sometimes Elsie thought she could see those jaws.

  This war was simpler than the last, she thought. Poland was a friend, as were Holland and Norway – Norway was such a good friend that Elsie sometimes heard the news in Norwegian very early in the morning. A lot of Britain’s friends were in trouble. Germany of course was an enemy, and now Italy. France had been a friend but now she wanted to be friends with Germany, or a part of her did. France was unreliable. Elsie didn’t have friends, but she had a neighbour who was rather like France: untrustworthy and too close for comfort.

  And now a stranger was coming, a stranger who was supposed to help her; perhaps she would. If only she wasn’t coming from so far away. The land girl was coming through London and she was being picked up by car at Newbury. Elsie knew that London wasn’t much more than sixty miles away, knew it could be reached by trains that ran quite frequently, but to her the city was another world, quite another being: dark, ferocious. Once you’d been there, you could never quite get free of it, it would keep trying to suck you back. After Moira returned from London that first time, she’d never sat down properly again, always restless.

  She hoped the girl wouldn’t be like Moira, or Brockway. Brockway was bringing the land girl in her car, and if the Land Army was a real army, Brockway was in the senior ranks. Elsie hadn’t liked Brockway, hadn’t liked her jaunty manner, thought she held her nose too high. She very much hoped the land girl wouldn’t be like Brockway. Elsie had asked, rather tremulous, if the land girl came from London. ‘Oh no, Miss Boston, you mustn’t worry, she’s been with the force for over a year.’ And then, as an afterthought, ‘I think she comes from Manchester,’ and Elsie, still tremulous, had said, ‘Oh.’ But she certainly needed the help, and Elsie felt sure she could teach the girl perfectly well as long as she worked hard and was willing to learn.

  They had all worked so hard in the early days. The boys outside with Dad, cutting a path through Yellow Field and clearing out the pond, the girls trying to make the house comfortable. Everyone’s hands and feet permanently splintered, the rain running through the attic like a tap. Oh, how they had worked. Except Moira. As long as the land girl wasn’t like Moira. Elsie switched off the wireless and carried her cup back into the kitchen. If only she didn’t have to stay in the house, sleep in the room directly opposite hers. They would be eating their meals together, every day. These things terrified her, quite literally. The door to Starlight opened, left ajar, a string pulling; it felt as if someone was tugging already – there would be letters, cards, the girl would take off to Reading for the pictures, she might ask questions. Elsie wasn’t at her best with questions.

  There were people who thought she would give up as soon as old Alfred had died. All on her own on the edge of the Downs with no money to speak of, you’d have thought she’d have had that much sense. But Elsie didn’t have that kind of sense. Besides, no one in Lambourn had ever believed the Bostons would stay when they arrived – and that was thirty years ago. And yet here she was, cows milked, calves at the gate, still here, holding on. It had never been easy. Once there had been Bert and they were going to work the farm together, brother and sister, when everyone else had gone. They just had to wait. Now everyone had gone and Bert too; his foot had been blown right off. But she was still here.

  She pulled on her boots and went out. In the garden, the vegetable plots were neatly marked out and full of good food; the beans waved on their poles like flags. The house didn’t look so bad either with its soft red brick. There were a few cracked chimney pots and some broken tiles (they could be put right easy). No sign of Smoke, who was probably still asleep in the barn – fine guard dog he was. She tied up a few stray shoots and crunched some snails briskly with her boot, then she slipped easily over the gate and across the new tarred road to where the calves were waiting; the ones at the front rested their chins on the top bar of the gate. They all pushed forward when they saw her, greeting her with their soft calf moos and twitching ears. ‘Silly things, what are you waiting for?’ She patted them before she pushed them off. ‘I’ve nothing for you, off you go, go on.’ They turned finally and ambled away. Pickwick was drinking at the bath trough; he raised his bony head to look at her and whickered, but quietly, as if to himself. The animals were looking well and there was still plenty of grazing.

  But in the orchard, half of last year’s apple crop had rotted on the grass and the abandoned glasshouses were a sorry sight. She usually tried to avoid this view. She and Dad had done all right with the marketing for a while. It had kept them busy: tray after tray of salad, all those tomatoes and strawberries, just the two of them. But now the ivy had got everywhere and the vine had reared into a monster, cracking the roof of the biggest glasshouse. Her sister Moira had persuaded Dad to buy the vine, one of her notions: Vitis vinifera, expensive, fancy. Dad was so soft. ‘Moira doesn’t even live here any more,’ Elsie protested, but he hadn’t taken any notice.

  She found Smoke by the gate of Yellow Field. He barked delightedly then lay down, front legs stretched out, his nose deep in his paws, bashful. ‘Silly dog. Where were you, silly old dog?’ He thumped his heavy tail. Elsie slung the leather tool bag over her shoulder and set off up the field. Yellow Field reached its highest point almost exactly in the middle, and Elsie liked the gusty breeze that followed her up the slope. At this time of year the field justified its name, thick with buttercups. Smoke trotted beside her at first, eager to prove himself, but Elsie’s pace was demanding and by the time she reached the gate to Cob Field he was distracted and lagging far behind, snuffling out butterflies and lacewings in the damp grass. It was the long, eastern hedge of Cob Field that brought her up here. This hedge marked the boundary between Elsie’s land and Fern Farm, which belonged to Phil Townsend, and last week some of Phil’s hoggets had got into her field. It wasn’t the first time. She (and Smoke) had sent them back – it had taken most of a morning – and she’d stopped up the gap with old planking and gorse. Today, she wanted to make sure that there was no way back.

  Elsie didn’t like sheep: she didn’t like the dim disregard in their eyes when they looked at you, or their moments of sudden growling anger; she particularly didn’t like the way that some of them were dedicated to getting places they shouldn’t. Cows were so much easier, so much friendlier.

  She made her way slowly along the hedge, checking for signs of weakness. The repair was holding well, but the shreds of wool lodged on her side seemed like an affront. In the past Phil had kept his hedges and his fences well, but he didn’t seem to be taking much care these days. The war had made her wary of incursions. The little planes flew over most days; our boys, she’d been told, but it didn’t make her feel much safer.

  She whistled and then paused to wait for Smoke, retying her scarf, watching the clouds – the sky was everything here. Phil had thanked her for sending the sheep back, but he hadn’t done any
thing yet to secure his own side. He was often out and about these days, slow but steady with his stick. He seemed to especially like the edge of Cob Field – well, it was his boundary too. Sometimes, early in the morning or at dusk, she had been up here and got a sense of someone close by, on the other side of the hedge perhaps, or in the shadows. It gave her a shiver. She had caught the smell of sweet tobacco, his tobacco, but when she called out, there was no reply.

  Elsie knew that traitors could live close by. Only last week she had read that an ice-cream parlour in Windsor had been shut down, the electrical equipment seized, the owner taken away. Phil didn’t seem to Elsie like a man who would know German – or Italian, come to that – he didn’t speak his English too well. No, Phil Townsend wasn’t an alien, but he was up to something, she was sure of it. But why would he want to hide on his own land, hide from her? It was the sort of thing a poacher would do – except a poacher wouldn’t smoke.

  Elsie continued very carefully along the edge of the field, alert to signs of possible ingress. Years ago they had dug this very ditch, the whole family trudging up the hill with lamps and shovels. She remembered nothing about the digging, only the ditch full of muddy water after a torrent of spring rain. Someone had pushed Bert into the ditch, everyone laughing and shrieking. Her mother had been so angry.

  Smoke was still dawdling, so she carried on without him. The slow pace was tiring and her hands were clammy. She rubbed them dry on her long shirt, then retied her scarf again – she should have brought a hat. More than halfway there. She had reached the stile and Fern Farm came into view – it was a natural stopping place, but she took a deep breath and pressed on. She didn’t need to see how well it all looked, how big and shambling. Phil always managed to make money. Just now he had all manner of schemes going with the Land Ag, to do with the war. In the past he had given them sound advice, friendlier than other locals: told them to grow oats for the horses, tips about choosing stock and farm sales and where to buy guns cheap. It was Phil who had fixed up the strawberry picking that very first summer. Squashed into the cart in the middle of the night, the pony’s hooves ringing in the dark – the first memory Elsie owned to – then making her way through row after row of plants with her basket and blistered, bloody fingers.