Jack was talking and she had missed his first words.
‘… if you are honestly interested. I can explain my feelings and my actions. It’s quite simple. You see, it’s all in the Bible. God said, “Thou shalt not kill.” So, therefore, it is morally wrong to go to war. There has to be a better way to deal with difficulties. And besides, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a doctor. Don’t know why. Doctors maintain life; they save life. How could anyone expect me to do otherwise? It just doesn’t make sense. Warfare is morally indefensible.’
Grace was painfully aware that she had had very little education or experiences that could be compared to Jack’s. Obviously, he knew more and bigger words than she did and could quote poets and politicians. But the argument that God had said, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ worried her. If God had said that, did he mean that it was never right to kill or did he mean that it was wrong to go out and murder someone? She remembered reading a newspaper article about her friend Daisy, who had seen a German pilot deliberately strafe a woman and child on Dartford Heath. Could that be called an act of warfare or should it be called murder? Oh, she could not bear to go on with this train of thought, especially since she had seen the newspaper long after the ghastly event and even then had not written to Daisy.
Jack was looking at her rather strangely. ‘Grace, does it make it easier for you if I say truthfully that I would be perfectly happy to go into any area of warfare, helping qualified doctors as much as I can with my fairly limited training? But to put on a silly little uniform and allow myself to be encouraged to shoot at my fellow man – I simply can’t do that.’
Grace felt unbearably sad. He believed so much in what he was saying that he was prepared to tolerate being bullied, even cruelly treated. ‘Jack, how do you know – as an actual fact – that God spoke to some human being and used those exact words?’
His look was both fond and pitying. ‘Poor dear Grace. Of course, it’s a fact. It’s in the Bible and the Holy Bible is the word of God.’
She could not let that pass: ‘Who says? God didn’t sit down himself and write it, did he?’
‘No.’ The tone in which that one small word was uttered told him how annoyed, with her and the debate, he was. For her, somehow, these great moral questions were simple, but Grace had never been a regular churchgoer. Far from encouraging her to go, Megan had actively discouraged, even forbidden her attendance. It was only when Grace had left school and started working in a factory office that she had managed to attend the Christmas Eve service with her friends. It had always been a joyful occasion, but part of her wondered, sadly, if it was the music, the lights, the candles, even the vestments worn by the clergymen, that appealed to something in her, rather than the doctrine itself.
Basically, Grace was practical. A teacher saying, ‘But the story of history is told by those who won the battles, not the defeated,’ had resonated with her. Perhaps the victors did not tell the whole truth, and perhaps the man or men, no matter how holy or how wise, who did transcribe God’s words, did not do it word for word.
‘Gosh, poor Walter is scrubbing the churns by himself. We’d better run,’ she said.
Late May 1940
Grace had never experienced anything as miraculous as spring on a farm. The beauty that met her eyes in the following weeks amazed her. Tiny curled leaves that opened overnight to show their different shades of green, fat flower buds that unfurled to reveal beauty that almost made her weep. Massed primroses made way for daffodils, hyacinths and delightful wild flowers that she had never seen before. Blossom appeared on trees and in the hedges that separated the fields.
‘See them hedges?’ Hazel told her. ‘Every species of plant you’ve got in there shows you a hundred years in the life of the hedge. Look, know what this is?’ he asked, pointing to a slim branch.
‘No.’
‘Hazelnut, and that’s …? He pointed.
‘Holly,’ answered the delighted Grace. ‘And what’s the prickly one with the blossom, Hazel?’
‘May, Grace. Hawthorn,’ he added since she had looked so surprised. ‘And don’t ask me why it’s called May. Esau’ll know, probably; his wife knew a lot about flowers, but all I know is we called it May blossom.’
‘I think it’s because it comes out in May,’ Jack told her as they drove back from their next milk delivery. By the way, Lady Alice told me there’s a dance in the next village on Saturday night. She says we can use the milk lorry if anyone wants to go.’
The air became heavy with expectancy.
‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Does anyone want to go?’
Is he asking me to go? Grace wondered, and what should she say if he was? They were, by far, the two youngest people on the estate, although Lady Alice was scarcely ten years older. For a moment, Grace found herself wondering about her employer. She was very pretty. Still not too old and the only child of an earl: why was her ladyship still unmarried? Perhaps she had loved and lost, like Grace herself with Sam? Grace took control of her mind. You’re beginning to act out stories like Sally, she berated herself.
‘Where does Lady Alice eat, Jack?’ Much more down-to-earth than, ‘Does Lady Alice have a gorgeous boyfriend?’
Once or twice a week, Lady Alice joined the estate workers when they were gathered in the kitchen for a reviving cup of tea, but she did not join them for meals.
‘What’s that got to do with whether or not you want to go to the dance?’
‘Of course I’d like to go to a dance but that means you’d have to drive.’
‘Of course I’ll drive, if you’d like to attend. For heaven’s sake, woman, how many dates have you been on?’
Grace thought first of the mean little house in Dartford and then of her friends. ‘We all went out together, I suppose, to the church hall and the pictures. My friend Sally’s dad used to sneak us in sometimes.’
‘It’s possible that, by the time of the next dance, if there is one, you will be able to drive, Grace, or, if it’s in the summer, we might be able to get our hands on some bikes, but in the meantime, Miss Paterson, would you do me the honour of accompanying me, and anyone else who wants to come along, to the farm workers’ dance at the village hall?’
Grace longed to accept. The first time a man in whom she was … at all interested had asked her for a real date and she hesitated. How she longed to say, ‘That’d be nice.’ She smiled. It was definitely a real date, but what would he say if she told him, and she had to tell him for how embarrassing it would be when he found out in the middle of the village hall?
‘Has anyone ever told you that you have the most beautiful eyes?’
Beautiful eyes? No, no one had told her but she knew that her eyes were – quite nice. ‘Lady Alice?’ she repeated, since she had no idea how to reply. ‘We never see her eating?’
‘You are supposed to say, “No, Jack, you’re the first person,” or, “Every sensible man in Kent, Jack.” My dear Miss Paterson, you have to learn how to take a compliment. But, never mind, we have years for you to learn. Of course Lady Alice eats. Did you think the aristocracy didn’t? There’s another kitchen in the main wing of the house. That’s where I was the day Lady Alice asked me if I could drive. The housekeeper gave me some coffee while I was waiting.’
Grace was fascinated. She had wondered often about the condition of the beautiful house. There was a housekeeper. She had no real idea of just what a housekeeper did besides looking after the house, a bit like a housewife,