Elizabeth Elgin - The Willow Pool

Yet the truth was as plain as the nose on your face, Meg thought triumphantly as everything clicked into place. Nanny Boag was as sane as most folk, given her age, and it was only when something didn’t suit her did she start her gaga act! She didn’t need her coupons, but no one else was getting their hands on them, so pull down the shutters and act stupid!

‘Gotcher, you crafty old biddy!’ Meg gloated. That one was as normal and nimble as need be, all things considered, but she’d got the Kenworthys fooled! From now on, though, she would have her work cut out pulling the wool over Margaret Mary Blundell’s eyes!

Though something Nanny had said was right, Meg sighed. No denying it: she didn’t speak properly! She got her thems and thoses wrong, and dropped aitches and spoke with a thick Liverpool accent – which was all right for Liverpool where most people she knew spoke the same and understood each other perfectly well, but it wasn’t right for Candlefold. She must ask Polly to help her. It was the only way she would ever learn to talk proper like Ma!

The second incident to give strength to Meg’s suspicions was two days later when the death of Kaiser Wilhelm II was reported, taking only four lines in the daily paper, which was all he deserved, come to think of it. She had been on her way to collect Mrs Kenworthy’s breakfast tray when dreadful wailing came to her from the floor above.

‘Oh, my goodness!’ Meg had taken the narrow nursery stairs two at a time to stop, breathless, outside the open door.

‘And thank God you are dead, you pig! It was you caused my John to be wounded! If you hadn’t started that war he’d be alive today! You should have died in those filthy trenches and not lived another twenty years! But I hope you died in pain, you evil bastard, and I wish I’d been there to see it! I’d have stood and cheered!’

‘Nanny! What’s to do?’ Meg pushed the door wider. ‘You’ll do yourself an upset, carryin’ on like that!’

‘Like what?’ The old women turned, eyes wide, lips relaxed in a smile, looking so cherubic that it was hardly possible to believe the venom in her words, nor the swearing either.

‘The Kaiser, I mean. Him bein’ dead.’

‘Dead, is he? Well, fancy that, now. I once heard it said he had a funny left arm – withered, you know. Must have been a great trial to him!’

‘It must have.’ Yet that same Kaiser with whom Nanny now sympathized had, only seconds ago, been loudly cursed by that apple-cheeked, smiling old lady! ‘Is there anything I can get you, Nanny?’ she said quietly.

‘No, thank you. Pop off and play. I’ll ring for one of the maids if I want anything.’

She had beamed again, the two-faced old cat, Meg fumed; changed from her cursing and swearing to a soft-voiced, gentle old woman and all because she had realized she might have been heard!

My, but she was going to take some watching, though how she was going to convince Mrs John and Polly about Nanny’s deceiving ways Meg sighed, was altogether another matter!

Meg had brushed the worn stone floor of the entrance hall and was dusting the panelling when Mary Kenworthy said, ‘Do you wonder as I do, Meg, how many people have dusted and polished and touched those panels?’

‘Thousands, I reckon. I like touching them. Silly, isn’t it, liking the feel of wood under your fingertips …’

‘Not at all. I feel the same way myself. And be sure that the long-ago woodcarver would be pleased to hear you say it.’

‘ How long ago?’

‘About five hundred years, I would say. It was the third Kenworthy who had this hall panelled – to proclaim his growing wealth, I suppose. When the Lancastrians ruled England, it would be. Y’know,’ she smiled, ‘hand-me-down talk has it that Richard Kenworthy – he was known as Dickon – wanted his great hall embellished with linenfold carving, but the artisan who did it didn’t please Master Dickon. It’s said that he told the woodcarver it looked more like drips of tallow down the side of a candle and that he would be the laughing stock of the Riding, with such a shoddy job! Whereupon the crafty carver told him that he would be the envy of all, being the first gentleman to benefit from the new candle fold panelling. And Dickon believed him, and paid him well for his pains. I think that is how the house got its name.’

‘You’re lucky, Mrs John – bein’ able to tell family jokes about all them – those – years ago. Don’t you feel proud – special, sort of?’

‘I’m not a Kenworthy, Meg, though I married into it and helped carry on the line and the Kenworthy pride too. And Polly – who is adopted as you will know – is the most devout Kenworthy of us all!’

‘It must be something about this place,’ Meg said softly. ‘It takes you over.’

‘So you like being with us, Meg? Your two weeks are almost up. Are you going to stay?’

‘Are you askin’?’ Meg smiled.

‘I most certainly am!’

‘Then if it’s all right with you, Mrs John, I’m stoppin’.’ She held out her hand. ‘And I hope I give satisfaction, I’m sure.’

‘I know you will. I’ve got used to having you around. But you haven’t taken the time off due to you. Why don’t you go home for a couple of days? There must be things you need to see to?’

‘We-e-ll, I’ll have to get my new address put on my ration book and identity card. And there’s the house, an’ all. I’ll have to ask next door to keep an eye on it; send on any letters that come.’

Letters. From Kip. They might be there, waiting for her. Yet she had hardly thought about him, so charmed had she been with her new life! Nor had she sent him so much as a picture postcard of Nether Barton, which, despite the shortage of such things, could still be bought at the pre-war price of tuppence at the post office.

‘Then shall we say you are on a forty-eight-hour pass, as Mark would call it. Will that suit, Meg?’

‘It’ll suit very nicely indeed.’

A pound a week, and all this? Oh my word yes, it would suit!

Meg stripped her bed of sheets and pillowcases, folding them neatly, ready to be taken to the wash house for Mrs Seed, who always came Thursdays. Before her marriage she had worked at Candlefold as a housemaid and now came each week to see to the laundry and, on Friday mornings, to do the ironing. It seemed to Meg that Mrs Seed was another who had come under the spell of this house, and still looked on it as a part of her way of life.

Mr Potter – you always called him Mister – was exactly the same, caring for the garden as if it were his own, he having arrived there as an apprentice thirty years ago and not inclined to go elsewhere, in spite of tempting offers. Ma had been the same, loyal to it in memory, a place never to be forgotten. And now her daughter was equally besotted. Even to think of visiting Tippet’s Yard did not please her as it should, for wasn’t Candleford to be her home now? But she was looking forward to seeing Nell and Tommy again; telling them about her new life and what it was really like living deep in the countryside. If she missed anything about Liverpool, she admitted, it was the two people who shared the shut-away little yard with her.

But first to catch the Preston bus. A good three hours it would take her with all the chopping and changing, and each mile taking her back to a place she would really rather not be. Yet Nell and Tommy deserved to be told about her good fortune, because up until now they had shared her troubles – them, and Kip.

Kip Lewis. She wished she could love him as Polly loved Davie, but she wanted to be really in love – which girl didn’t? – wanted to know the highs and lows of it and the needing and the giving. She would accept, even, the absolute misery when a letter did not arrive and the brief hours spent together to balance out weeks of separation. If she loved as Polly loved, that was. If it happened to her as suddenly and completely as it had happened to Polly, and her stomach went boing ! as Polly’s had done, then she would be glad to be in love for ever.