Easterleigh Hall at War Read Free Page B

get on with sorting our dream of a hotel, at last.’
    She lifted her glass of chilled white wine, taking a large sip, more a gulp really, but by, she needed it. Within seconds it seemed her shoulders were low, her muscles felt loose, her smile was growing. ‘You will sing and fiddle for the wedding parties and we can get Bern . . .’ She stopped. Bernie had been killed, so too Jack’s marra, his close pitman friend, Mart Dore.
    Jack had been listening and leaned forward, stroking Tim’s dark hair. ‘We’ll come back, Evie pet. We’ll all come back.’
    Mam said, ‘All will be well.’ The family laughed and Da patted his wife’s shoulder. It was then Evie noticed that Millie’s place was empty. ‘Where is she?’
    Jack shrugged. ‘She’s gone for more cranberry sauce.’
    Mam murmured, ‘I told her there was some further along by Captain Neave but she was determined.’ She mouthed, ‘Showing off for Jack, I reckon.’
    Evie placed her serviette on the table, and started to rise, her food like ashes in her mouth. ‘I’ll help her. She probably doesn’t know where it is.’
    Simon pulled her back down, saying for her ears only, his blue eyes determined, ‘Let someone else do something for a change. Every moment with you is precious. She’ll find what she’s after.’
    That was what Evie feared, because the only other person down there was Roger.
    Jack was watching and listening, and now he leaned forward yet again, saying quietly, ‘Let it go, pet. It’s the bairn that’s important. Over my dead body will he have Tim, who deserves better, and, by, I don’t want to have to keep leaning over like this to calm you down, it’s causing havoc with me innards.’
    She laughed. Jack grinned, lifting a finger towards the baize door. ‘Here she is with the cranberry, so I reckon you’ve counted two and two and made ten.’
    Millie sat, avoiding everyone’s eyes, her hair adrift from her cap, and Evie would have bet that nearer ten was right after all. Stupid woman. She always had been and always would be, and why had Jack ever married her? But she knew why, and it was best left alone.
    After the meal the nurses sang Christmas carols under Matron’s Amazonian conducting, and were joined by several of the wounded, as well as Simon and Evie, and Dr Nicholls, the Medical Officer. It was Simon whose solos brought the audience to their feet, his pure notes taking them from the present to a quieter, more blessed time. Jack told Evie how Simon had stilled everyone’s hearts in the trenches, during a lull in the fighting, when he had sung ‘Oh for the wings of a dove’.
    For that moment she allowed happiness to enter.

Chapter 2
Easterleigh Hall, 26th December 1914
    OVERNIGHT, LIGHT SNOW had fallen, but that didn’t deter Mr Auberon and Jack from joining Old Stan, the head gardener, in the arboretum to drag out the roots of a swathe of old trees cut down a few days before Christmas. Every spare space was to be used for vegetables, Captain Richard had insisted in a memo sent from his convalescent bed to the usual staff breakfast meeting in the kitchen on 23rd December. He had ended,
‘The Atlantic is relatively safe for merchant shipping, but for how long? We must be responsible. We must sidestep shortages
.’
    In the kitchen, a Boxing Day morning would perhaps have dawdled for Evie in a perfect world, allowing her time for Simon, but it rushed past in the face of the never-ending demands of the kitchen. This was due, in part, to the fact that Mrs Moore, and Evie, had decreed that invalids needed food when their body clocks insisted, not when Matron’s chimed. At first Matron had hitched her vast bosom and huffed, but it was a token gesture. Almost immediately she had said, ‘I have never had a kitchen willing to put the patients first. My thanks to you and your