‘But it’s true!’ He coloured hotly. He wasn’t telling lies. ‘I saw them. Kissing. I’ve seen them ever so many times – well, twice. But they were kissing each other, both times.’
‘Now see here, young man; even if you did see Roz and some airman, you’re to keep quiet about it or you’ll land the lass in trouble with her gran. Roz isn’t old enough to have boyfriends – not yet.’
‘But she’s ever so old, Aunt Poll.’
‘You let Mrs Fairchild be the judge of that. You mind your own business and get on with your breakfast.’
Arnie bit savagely into his toast. He’d have thought Aunt Poll would’ve been interested to know about Roz and the navigator from the aerodrome. He wished now he hadn’t told her.
Polly pursed her lips, wondering how much truth there was in Arnie’s revelations and how much was the product of his over-active imagination. My word, but Roz had kept the young man dark – if young man there was. Talk went around the village pretty sharpish; surely, if there’d been gossip she’d have heard it, sooner or later. All there was to do in Alderby, most times, was gossip. But there was no smoke without fire. Kissing, were they?
‘Beats me how you get to know so much, lad,’ she muttered. ‘Seeing’s one thing; blabbing it all over the village is another.’
‘I haven’t blabbed! You’re the only one I’ve told!’
‘Then let’s see to it that it stays that way, shall we?’
Until she’d had time to think about it, that was. Until she’d got to the bottom of it and got the facts right. Only then could she warn the Mistress. Warn Mrs Fairchild? But maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea at all. Maybe it would do a lot more good if she were to have a quiet word with young Roz?
Oh, drat Arnie and that inquisitive little nose of his! Drat the lad, though of course he just might be right. After all, Roz was nineteen, or would be, come April. Happen who the lass kissed was nobody’s business but her own.
‘And will you go and bring that milk in,’ she said testily. ‘Like I told you!’
Kath leaned her bicycle against the kitchen wall and pulled the bell-handle on Ridings’ back door. She had thought, for one mad moment to walk boldly up the front door steps and lift the heavy iron knocker, but she remembered her days as a housemaid, and her courage left her.
‘Come in.’ Roz smiled, taking in the bright green pullover, the collar and tie, the shiny black shoes. ‘You do look smart.’
‘I was thinking much the same about you.’ She had been quick to notice the pleated grey skirt, the pale green blouse. ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you in real clothes.’
‘We’re in the little sitting-room, this afternoon. Gran said it could do with an airing, but it’s really in your honour.’ Roz nodded vaguely down the passageway. ‘I’ve been chopping logs for the fire all morning.’
Little remained of the original house, yet the surviving rooms and passages retained the spaciousness of a larger, grander place which the stone-flagged floors and uneven walls did nothing to dispel.
‘This house must have been really something,’ she murmured, the servant in her taking in the brass door-handles, the hard-to-clean leaded window panes, bellied with age.
‘I suppose it was, but what’s left suits us all right.’ Roz opened a white-painted door. ‘Gran, here’s Kathleen Allen.’
‘My dear, how kind of you to come.’ Hester Fairchild’s pleasure was genuine, her handshake firm. ‘You look chilled. Come to the fire, and warm yourself. You can look at our old ruin later.’
She stooped to place a log on the fire then sank back cosily into the well-cushioned chair. ‘Such a luxury these days, Mrs Allen – fires, I mean. And will you allow an old lady to call you Kathleen?’
‘Oh please, I’d like that. And you’re not old. I got quite a surprise, in fact. I’d expected – well, a grandmother, you see.’ Her cheeks flushed crimson. ‘Sorry. I – I meant –’
‘Don’t be sorry. Don’t spoil it. I’m not too old to enjoy a compliment. But tell me about yourself. I’m quite a busybody, given the chance.’
‘There isn’t a lot to tell.’ Kath looked around the small, snug room. Every piece of furniture was oddly matched, yet so right. A pair of brocade-seated chairs – Sheraton, were they, like those in the Birmingham town house? – a sofa with a faded, delphinium-patterned cover, china bowls of dried lavender flowers, a hand-embroidered footstool. Things passed down; old things, loved things, safe things. ‘I like being a landgirl. It’s the first big thing that’s happened to me – apart from Barney, that is.’
‘Your husband? Roz tells me he’s abroad in the Army. You’ll miss him.’
‘Yes, I do.’
The log began to crackle and flame, shining the brass fender, splashing the walls with fireglow. There were generations of Fairchilds in this room; Roz was lucky, knowing so precisely who she was.
‘Have you heard from him lately?’
‘Last Monday. Sometimes I don’t get a letter for weeks then six arrive, all at once. It’s like Christmas, then.’ Was like Christmas.
‘Christmas.’ Hester nodded, her eyes suddenly sad.
‘Why don’t we go out?’ Roz had recognized that faraway look. ‘Think we might have our walk while it’s still light – or take a look at the house if you’d like, and meet the rest of the Fairchilds. They’re a rum lot! Would you mind, Gran, if we did?’
‘Not a bit. Off you go. I shall sit here by the fire and listen to the wireless.’
‘Now don’t forget – you must be careful not to mention the prisoner,’ Roz whispered when they had closed the door behind them. ‘Nor Paul.’
‘I’ll remember.’
‘Right! I shall now bore you silly with the Fairchilds.’ With a flourish of her arm Roz indicated the stairs. ‘This is really the second-best staircase, by the way. The posh one was destroyed in the fire. And these lot,’ she nodded to the chain-hung portraits, ‘are all they managed to salvage of my forebears. Meet the folks!’
‘This is all so lovely,’ Kath said softly. ‘Far nicer than I’d have thought. I can understand your Gran wanting to hang on to it; and to think I called it an old ruin. But you love it, too, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course, but I wouldn’t go on about it like Gran does. I like the outside best – the old walls and the empty windows; so stark, somehow, yet so beautiful in summer.’ When the climbing roses were flowering, the honeysuckle and the clematis. ‘And if you could just see it, Kath, when the moon is full and it shinés through those great, empty windows – now that really is something. That’s when I love it most, I think – when it’s all sad, sort of, as if it’s remembering. But let’s have a quick look around here, then we’ll go out and I’ll show you what I mean.’
‘So what do you think?’ Roz demanded, as Kath saw for herself the strange beauty of a once-great house.
‘It’s amazing,’ she whispered, asking herself how the sight of rose-brick walls and stone-mullioned windows could be so disturbing, so poignant.
‘All this lot should have been demolished, really, after the fire but Gran wouldn’t hear of it. So my father left just the walls – an outline, I suppose, of what it had once been.’
‘I’m