A Christmas Candle Read online

  Eleanor Armstrong gave a little purr of satisfaction, and squeezed Eve’s hand. ‘Good,’ she said decidedly. ‘Then tomorrow I shall get a taxi into the city and start looking for lodgings nearer civilisation than Drake’s Farm – for myself, I mean.’

  By the time they re-entered the farmhouse Mabel and the land girls had disappeared to their beds, since they started work at the crack of dawn. By a great piece of good fortune Chrissie had not woken and Eve was not surprised to be told to go straight up to their room, since her mother had some business to discuss with Mrs Faversham. She crossed the kitchen and headed for the stairs, guessing they would be talking about Eleanor’s new scheme. If Mrs Faversham were to refuse … but she could not bear the thought and put it out of her head. Her father had a saying which came, she rather thought, from a song: ‘Never trouble troubles till troubles trouble you.’ Downstairs she could hear the hum of voices, but she did not even attempt to listen. Suddenly, she was sure that all would be well.

  Next morning, Eve was awoken by something heavy landing on her chest, and a voice shouting in her ear.

  ‘Wake up, wake up, Evie Armstrong! I want my breakfast egg what Mabel promised me, and Mummy says I can have soldier boys to dip in the yolk and milk from the cow to drink.’

  Eve opened reluctant eyes, wondering for a moment where she was, then remembered and sat up with a jerk, tipping Chrissie on to the floor and making him give a wail of protest.

  ‘You can’t have breakfast until you’re dressed,’ she told him, scrambling out of bed and noticing with some surprise that their mother was nowhere to be seen. ‘I’ll do your buttons, but you can put your own clothes on.’

  ‘I can’t. You know Nanny Burton puts me clothes on,’ Chrissie said quickly.

  Eve laughed at the mental picture of Nanny Burton in Chrissie’s blue shorts and chequered shirt, but she picked her brother up and sat him on top of the chest of drawers.

  ‘All right, but you’ll have to wear yesterday’s shirt and shorts, because Mummy hasn’t unpacked yet,’ she said. ‘We’ll have our breakfasts and then come back and start.’

  Eleanor Armstrong was not usually an early riser, but when Eve and Chrissie entered the kitchen she had already left the house. Mabel, sitting at the table crunching toast, informed Eve that Mrs Armstrong had gone out some time previously.

  ‘I imagine she went to order a taxi to drive her to Plymouth,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what she wanted to do there, but she was awfully eager to get away before Chrissie woke.’ She eyed Eve narrowly. ‘Do you know why she lit out at such an early hour? It’s got to have something to do with that telephone call last night.’

  Eve was about to explain when Auntie Bess bawled: ‘Brekker up! Chrissie has the blue egg cup with the picture of a cockerel on one side; Eve, yours is the white one. Mabel’s been let off her own work today so she can explain the chores you’ll be doing the rest of the week.’

  Anxious to please, Eve bolted her breakfast, which was delicious, and watched Chrissie slowly dipping soldier boys into his egg’s golden yolk whilst Mabel and Mrs Faversham cleared the table round them. Finally she got to her feet and shook her head at Chrissie, who promptly tried to hurry and then wailed when he got eggshell in his mouth.

  ‘Quiet, you!’ Mabel said sharply. ‘You can’t come with your sister and me because you’ll slow us up. Be a good boy and do as Auntie Bess tells you, and we’ll see you at dinner time.’

  Chrissie gave a shriek of protest and pointed to the piece of brown shell which he had just spat into his palm. ‘You’re a naughty girl, Eve Armstrong,’ he wailed. ‘Mummy said you were to look after me; I won’t be left with this nasty old woman, I won’t, I won’t!’

  Eve was horrified by her little brother’s outburst but Auntie Bess did not seem perturbed. ‘You’ll do as I tell you,’ she said equably. She jerked a thumb at the back door and winked at Mabel and Eve. ‘He’ll bide wi’ me, no question,’ she said. ‘No need to take him with you; I’ve found up my box of old toys and it’ll keep him happy sortin’ them out. And there’s the Noah’s Ark. When my lads were young and it were too rainy to go out they’d spend hours pairing the animals up and having mock wars. Afore you goes off, Mabel, you might bring the play box through – it’s on a chair in the dining room – and Eve, since his lordship has stopped bellowin’ you might as well clear his place at the table. Then he can spread everythin’ out on that until ’tis time for me to cook dinner.’

  ‘He could play on the floor and save you trouble,’ Eve said rather timidly. She could imagine all too well how her brother would react if he was told to move everything off the table in the middle of a game with some Noah’s Ark animals, but Auntie Bess, though she smiled, shook her head.

  ‘I don’t want him underfoot while I’m gettin’ the ingredients for my baking,’ she explained. ‘I dare say he’d like to give me a hand when I’m ready. I always used to give my boys a piece of pastry each which they could make into any shape they liked.’ She frowned thoughtfully. ‘Mebbe they was a little older than his lordship here, but I expect we’ll manage to amuse each other.’ She gestured towards the back door. ‘Off with you, girls, and be thankful he’s too small to reach the handle. You won’t need your coats, for ’tis a warm day.’ She smiled kindly at Eve. ‘No need to worry about your brother. I’ve reared a family of my own and know all the tricks, though ’tis a long time since my own boys rifled the toy box.’

  Opening the door and slipping out into the farmyard, Eve waited for a shriek of protest, but it did not come, and presently she and Mabel strode out into the lane, since Mabel had announced her intention of taking her new friend to see the village school, and the rectory where children too young for school would be cared for while their older siblings were in class.

  As they entered the lane and saw the orchard on their right Eve suddenly remembered the boy in the apple tree and opened her mouth to ask Mabel who he was, but then remembered his hushing gesture. Hastily, she closed her mouth again, but though she looked hopefully up at the trees with their prolific crops of colourful fruit there was no sign of the boy. She supposed he must have been stealing apples, though why he should feel the need to do so when he might fill his pockets with windfalls until he could carry no more she could not imagine.

  Mabel was chattering away, explaining that the chores of which Auntie Bess had spoken were pleasant ones: feeding the hens, preparing the food for the pigs and then tipping it into their troughs, brushing down the farmyard and transferring the steaming pats of cow dung from the cowshed to the muck heap. Then there were tasks with which Eve could help, although she would not be able to manage them alone: harnessing the pony which pulled the trap, forking hay down from the loft into the mangers for the two big carthorses, and transferring milk from the shining galvanised pails to the big churns which, Mabel informed her, would be collected by the dairy lorry as soon as milking was finished.

  By the time all this information had been absorbed by Eve the two girls had reached the ford, where they stopped to gaze into the limpid waters.

  ‘I always leave Drake’s Farm earlier than I need, because everyone likes to play with water even when they’re nearly thirteen,’ Mabel said instructively. ‘Bob – he’s Auntie Bess’s younger son – has told me some great stories. In another month he says the hazelnuts will be ripe for picking, and a week or two after us kids have stripped the hazels the sweet chestnuts start. They’re more difficult to gather because of their prickly shells, but Bob says he and his pals always found a way to get them so we shall too. I tell you, living at Drake’s Farm is just about the best thing that could happen to you …’ she glanced rather guiltily at her companion, ‘except living in your own home, of course.’

  Eve thought of her home, with its electric lift which could whisk you up to the third floor in a magic moment. In her mind she thanked George, the lift boy, crossed the gleaming parquet flooring of the corridor and entered her flat. She stood for a moment, listening to the familiar so
unds – a clatter of crockery and cutlery and the soft murmur of cockney voices – and smiled to herself. That would be the maids, tackling the breakfast washing up, which was usually their first task. Bertha would wash up one day whilst Catherine dried and put away, and the next day Bertha would dry and Catherine wash up. At the weekend, and during school holidays, as soon as breakfast was cleared away Eve and Nanny Burton, with Chrissie sitting comfortably on Nanny’s hip, would follow Mummy into the morning room, where Nanny Burton would be given Mummy’s orders for the day. Often, these did not concern the children. They would go to the playroom and Eve would read a book or paint a picture or learn poetry by heart whilst Mummy, already beautifully dressed and made up, would telephone her friends and arrange to meet them for coffee in Swan & Edgar, or for lunch at Fortnum & Mason. Nursery luncheon, as Eve had been told to call it, was a dull meal. Chrissie would have sardines on toast followed by rice pudding, and Eve, who hated sardines, might be regaled with luncheon meat. Nanny Burton, a large woman with a large appetite, had much more interesting food and sometimes she would share it with the children, having first made them promise not to tell, but generally their meals could be described as plain but wholesome. Afternoons were only spent in the flat when it was raining or too cold to go out. Otherwise they went for invigorating walks through the London streets, visiting museums, art galleries and even, once, a picture house, where Nanny Burton informed her charges that the lady and gentleman they were watching were not actually in the theatre itself but miles and miles away. Eve pretended to understand the events unfolding on the screen but Chrissie, who had slumbered peacefully throughout, showed an alarming tendency to ask questions about what little he had seen. Thinking quickly, Nanny Burton told Mummy that he had fallen asleep as they walked across Hyde Park and must have dreamed the whole thing, so Mummy had never guessed that on one occasion at least the children had not been enjoying the park’s fresh air, but had been sitting in a stuffy cinema watching a matinee performance of Trouble in Paradise.

  ‘Did you see that?’ Mabel’s voice brought Eve abruptly back to the present. ‘It was a brown trout! The stream’s very shallow here, but there are two big deep pools where water drains off from a steep hillside, and that’s where the trout lie up. Bob used to fish for them when he lived at home, but he doesn’t get the opportunity all that often now he’s in the Navy. Did you see it? The trout, I mean?’

  ‘No, I was looking for mermaids,’ Eve said unguardedly, then gave a little laugh. ‘I know there’s no such thing, of course, but this is such a magical place …’ Her voice trailed away and she looked anxiously into her companion’s face, fearing to see amusement or even contempt in the older girl’s expression.

  But Mabel was nodding and smiling. ‘You’re right there,’ she said. ‘I’ve been staying with Auntie Bess all summer, and though of course I miss Mother and Father I’m very happy here. We came from Norfolk, which is beautiful too, but very different from Devon. I know what you mean when you call this place “magical”, and it’s always changing. Auntie Bess says in winter the stream doubles or trebles in size, so we shan’t be crossing here when we go to school, but will go by bridge, so to speak. I expect you’ve got wellies?’ She chuckled. ‘We’ll need them in the winter. Devon, Devon, glorious Devon, always rains six days out of seven. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it rains as much as that, more like four days out of seven, but still a lot more than it did in Norfolk.’ She cocked her head on one side in thought. ‘But it’s gentle rain, soft and warm, and no one takes any notice save to say …’ and here Mabel’s voice changed and deepened to that of an elderly Devonshire man: ‘’tis good for the crops, my handsome.’

  She laughed, and Eve laughed with her as they skipped quickly across the stones and entered the beech wood. The trees still wore their summer foliage, and the girls strolled companionably along under the canopy of green and gold until they reached the village, where their first visit was to the church, a little grey building standing amidst very old gravestones and wild grasses which were already whitening after the long hot summer.

  ‘If we see them I’ll introduce you to the rector and his wife,’ Mabel said. ‘Mrs Ryder will be in charge of the crèche, or whatever it calls itself, so we can tell her about Chrissie. Things are still in an awful muddle at the village school, apparently – it seems they sent two schools here instead of one, and then there are the local children as well, so no one knows when term will start.’ She pointed to a small grey stone building adjoining a playground which was like all the school playgrounds Eve had ever seen. ‘That’s the school. There’s talk of taking over the village hall for some classes, but it’s still all up in the air.’ She grinned mischievously. ‘So us kids are having a sort of extended holiday whilst the teachers sort themselves out. Ah, there’s Mrs Ryder. Come on – I’ll introduce you.’

  But the rector’s wife eyed them with some surprise. ‘What are you two doing here?’ she asked briskly. ‘It’s registration day; you were supposed to be at the school no later than nine o’clock. I’m afraid you’re bound to get into trouble for turning up thirty minutes after everyone else has left.’

  ‘We’re not evacuees, Mrs Ryder,’ Mabel said quickly. ‘It’s me, Mabel Davies, and this is my friend Eve. We’re living with Mrs Faversham at Drake’s Farm and nobody told us anything about having to register today.’

  Mrs Ryder was a small, middle-aged woman with a flat bosom and shrewd dark brown eyes. She looked rather fierce and Eve shrank closer to Mabel as the older woman produced a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles from her jacket pocket and placed them on her nose. Suddenly she smiled.

  ‘Mabel, dear. I’m so sorry I didn’t know you, but I’ve seen so many children over the past couple of days that I don’t believe I’d recognise my own if they turned up unexpectedly.’ She peered at Eve. ‘And you’ll be the young lady whose father is at sea. Mrs Faversham told me you have a little brother who will be coming to my crèche.’ She whipped the spectacles off and placed them carefully back in her pocket, then held out a hand and shook Eve’s warmly. ‘I’m sorry I can’t stay to chat and make you welcome,’ she said apologetically, ‘but I’m just off to a meeting in the next village. No doubt we shall meet again.’ Without giving either girl a chance to reply she climbed into the driver’s seat of a small and very old motor car, started the engine and departed with a great crashing of gears. Mabel giggled.

  ‘She’s a funny old dear, but although you might not think it, young children adore her,’ she said. ‘I believe her youngest is not much older than Chrissie, so she’s probably had plenty of practice. Auntie Bess says she has a way with children, even though she doesn’t look the cuddly kind.’

  They walked round the school, looking for a way in, but all the doors were locked. It was a typical Victorian building with high windows which let in light but could not be seen out of unless you were a good deal taller than most pupils. The village hall next door was simply a long room with windows on the side overlooking the street, below which were a great many cheap folding chairs. At one end was a rudimentary kitchen and at the other an equally rudimentary cloakroom with pegs for coats. The floor, however, was wood block and well polished, which surprised Eve until Mabel told her that dances were held there monthly. The chairs beneath the windows were for seating the audience when films or indeed any other forms of entertainment were showing.

  When Mabel had conducted Eve on a tour of the premises the two of them visited the village shop. Mabel produced a little red purse and, having given some serious thought to her choice, bought two ounces of humbugs. When one of these was comfortably tucked in each girl’s cheek, they emerged into the street once more.

  ‘Well, you’ve seen just about all there is to see of the village,’ Mabel said. She pointed to a large shed, before which was a solitary petrol pump. ‘That’s the blacksmith’s forge; he shoes horses and mends cars, only there aren’t many cars in the village yet. He’s Mr Pryde; he’s nice. I’d introduce you, but he driv
es the local bus and he won’t be back yet – he’ll have taken the older kids to register at the big school in town.’ She glanced at the sun now high above their heads. ‘Oh, dear, it’s taken longer than I thought it would to show you round. We’ll be late for lunch; I just hope Auntie Bess has saved us some grub.’

  Eve set off at a brisk pace the way they had come, but Mabel laughed and tugged at her arm. ‘No need to hurry. I was only teasing you about being late for lunch. It’s usually what they call a “ploughman’s”: Auntie Bess’s fresh-baked bread, the onions she pickled last year, a big bowl of lettuce and tomatoes, and cheese. The farmhands – Mr Trevalyn and old Mr Smith – eat with us if they’re working near enough, and if not Auntie Bess packs a lunch for each of them and someone takes them down a jug of tea. That will probably be our job most days until school starts.’

  Eve gulped. ‘Will you be going to school in town? I do hope not, otherwise it’s going to be horrid. All the evacuees will know each other and no one will know me. Well, there is one boy I sort of know, but he’ll be in a separate building, won’t he?’

  Mabel frowned, then laughed. ‘You really don’t know anything, do you?’ she said. ‘I take it you didn’t go to a village school – well, obviously you didn’t. Girls and boys are taught together here.’ She laughed again. ‘Just imagine trying to separate pupils by sex as well as by age and ability. But no, I’ll be coming here with you – a lot of the local kids stay on until they’re fourteen.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ Eve said, giving a sigh of relief. ‘It’s not that I’m frightened exactly, but it’s so hard not knowing anyone. Suppose they pick on me? There was a girl at my old school who’d had an operation on something called a cyst and the nursing home had shaved her head. The other girls were horrible to her. They called her Baldy and said she’d had nits, whatever they may be, and wouldn’t sit next to her in class. Even the teachers made remarks; I should think she was the only girl in the school to be glad when the war started, although of course I haven’t seen her since July; perhaps her hair has grown again by now.’