Elizabeth Elgin - Windflower Wedding

‘You’re devious, Bas Sutton, and shameless.’ She clasped her arms round his neck, offering her mouth because even if Mr Catchpole were not sitting on his box, smoking contentedly, the raspberry canes hid them. And she did like it when he kissed her, and she wanted nothing more than to say yes, she would marry him; would have said it, except for just one thing. Her sort and Bas Sutton’s sort didn’t mix. Not that she was ashamed of her ordinariness. She was what she was because of it and she loved her parents and her grandfather. She even loved Rochdale, though not quite as much as Rowangarth.

Rowangarth. Bas was sprung from the Rowangarth Suttons – the Garth Suttons, Mr Catchpole called them. His grandfather Edward Sutton had been born at Rowangarth, even though he married into Pendenys. And the Pendenys Suttons had the brass, she had learned, and one day Bas would inherit that great house – or was it a castle? – simply because his Uncle Nathan, who owned it now, had no children and in the natural order of things, the buck would stop at Sebastian Sutton – or so Bas once said.

But even if Bas refused Pendenys, he’d be rich in his own right because one day he would inherit one of the most prosperous and prestigious studs in Kentucky, while Gracie Fielding lived in a red-brick council house and would inherit nothing except her mother’s engagement ring. And the silver-plated teapot that had come to her from a maiden aunt.

‘What are you thinking about? You were staring at that weather cock as if you expected it to take off.’

‘I – oh, I was thinking it’s time for Mr Catchpole’s tea so you’d better kiss me just once more, then you can stay here and finish picking this row till I call you. And don’t squash them. They’re for the house, for dessert tonight, and Tilda Tewk doesn’t like squashy fruit!’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He kissed her gently, then whispered, ‘I love you, Gracie.’

He always told her he loved her because one day she would let slip her guard and say she loved him too. One day. And when it happened, he would throw his cap in the air, climb to the top of Holdenby Pike and shout it out to the whole Riding!

‘I’m sure you do, Bas Sutton,’ she said primly. ‘But in the meantime get on with picking those rasps!’

‘You’re not interested in the candies I’ve brought you, or the silk stockings or the lipstick, then?’

‘Pick!’ she ordered, then laughing she left him to find Jack Catchpole, who was puffing contentedly on a well-filled pipe.

‘I’ve come to make the tea,’ she said. ‘Bas is carrying on with the picking.’

‘Ar. He’s a right grand lad, tha’ knows.’

‘I’m sure he is, but that’s between me and Bas, isn’t it, and nobody else!’

She stopped, horrified at her cheek, her daring, but Mr Catchpole continued with his contented puffing and his wheezy chuckling and didn’t take offence at all. Because he knew what the outcome of it all would be, despite the lass’s protestations. He’d said as much to Lily.

‘Mark my words, missus, young Bas isn’t going to take no for an answer. Things alus happens in threes and there’ll be three weddings round these parts, mark my words if there isn’t.’

And in the meantime, may heaven bless and protect GIs who brought tins of tobacco every time they came courting his land girl!

‘Make sure it runs to three mugs, Gracie lass,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘And make sure I get the strongest!’

Life on an mid-September afternoon could be very pleasant, be danged if it couldn’t – even if there was a war on!

Her watch over, Leading Wren Lyndis Carmichael scanned the letterboard beside the door at Hellas House. Everyone did it. It was automatic on entering quarters.

She reached for the one addressed to Daisy, recognizing Keth’s writing and the Censor’s red stamp. She would put it in Daisy’s top drawer with the one that came yesterday – a kind of welcome back after her leave.

It was only then she saw the letter bearing her own name, and a bright orange 20-cents Kenyan stamp. It had taken almost three weeks to arrive. Sea mail, of course. Very few letters came by air now.

She closed the door of Cabin 4A behind her, placing the letters on the chest of drawers. The midday meal was being served; she would read her own letter when she had eaten because it was from her father and the first since he had written telling her of her mother’s death – the woman she had thought was her mother, that was.

She glanced round the small, empty cabin. She missed Daisy. It was almost a year since a woebegone Wren in an ill-fitting uniform and flush-faced from a raging temperature came to Cabin 4A.

A lot had happened in that time. They became close friends, and shared runs ashore with Drew Sutton when his minesweeper docked in Liverpool. Lyn tried not to think about Drew Sutton now, because she had fallen crazily in love with him and ached for him to love her.

And so he would have, she thought despairingly, had not Kitty Sutton arrived from America. It had been a love-at-first-sight job for them both – or so Daisy had said on one of the rare occasions on which she now mentioned her brother.

It had been that, all right. Love, and everything else! Drew and Kitty spent that same night together and in the morning they were engaged. That was what hurt, Lyn acknowledged. Them sleeping together, because she had practically offered herself on a plate, only to be gently turned down by Drew Sutton. As if he were waiting for Kitty to come along, she thought, and amusing himself with Lyn Carmichael meantime, damn fool she had been for letting him.

She lifted her chin and bit on her lip. She no longer cried just to think of Drew, and Drew kissing Kitty and making love to Kitty. Not outwardly, that was. Her tears were gone because she had no more left to cry; only those inside her that hurt like hell; tears that didn’t leave her eyelids swollen and her nose red, but which writhed through her to stick in a hard knot in her throat and refuse to be shed.

She let go a deep sigh, then made her reluctant way to the mess. After early watch, kept-warm dinners were served and kept-warm dinners offered hard peas and gravy dried leathery. And it was the same with the custard, spooned over a sugarless pudding. Leathery, like the gravy she thought miserably, and at this moment she wanted to be miserable because a letter had come from her father and she didn’t want to open it.

Nor would she, she thought defiantly, taking a kept-warm plate from the serving hatch. She would not open the letter until Daisy came back from leave; pretend it had arrived only that morning. And then, because Daisy knew all about what had gone on in Kenya, and before Kenya, reading what her father had written wouldn’t seem so bad.

She speared a chunk of meat on the end of her fork, looking at it distastefully.

‘Roll on my leave,’ she said out loud to no one in particular. Roll on October when she would collect her travel warrant and her leave pass, and a seven-day ration card, and go to stay with Auntie Blod in Llangollen. At least in Llangollen there would be no chance of accidentally meeting Drew Sutton – with Kitty.

She began to mull over the idea of volunteering for overseas service and knew at once she would never do it; knew that she lived daily in the hope of seeing Drew, even with Kitty, because she loved him that much.

She would always love him.

Tatiana Sutton left the Underground at Knightsbridge and turned left into Brompton Road, thinking with pleasure of the rabbit, already skinned, and the pheasant, already plucked and wrapped in newspapers, in her leather bag. Daisy’s father had given them and Daisy’s mother prepared them, sending with them her very best love to Sparrow. And not only meat enough for four meals, but two large brown eggs given by Gracie, fresh from the nest only that morning and not weeks old like the rationed shop eggs Sparrow had to break into a cup and sniff suspiciously before using.