‘An acquaintance?’
‘That is all.’
Mrs Potts’s eyes narrowed. ‘Not a wedding then?’
‘No.’
‘Because I heard it on good authority that there’s been both a proposal and an acceptance.’
It was no secret that Mrs Potts’s ‘good authority’ was obtained by careful monitoring of letters and telephone calls, the details of which were then cross-referenced against a healthy catalogue of local gossip. Though Percy didn’t go so far as to suspect the woman of steaming envelopes open before sending them on their merry way, there were those in the village who did. In this case, however, there had been very little post to steam (and not of the sort to get Mrs Potts excited, Meredith being Juniper’s only correspondent) just as there was no truth to the rumour. ‘I believe I would know if that were the case, Mrs Potts,’ she said. ‘Rest assured, it’s just a dinner. ’
‘A
‘Oh, but aren’t they all at a time like this?’ said Percy, breezily. ‘One never knows when one might be sitting down to eat one’s last.’ She plucked the letters from the postmistress’s hand and as she did so spied the cut-glass jars that had once stood on the counter. The acid drops and butterscotch were all but gone, but a small, rather sad pile of Edinburgh rock had solidified in the base of one. Percy couldn’t stand Edinburgh rock, but it was Juniper’s favourite. ‘I’ll take what you have left of the rock, if you don’t mind.’
With a sour expression, Mrs Potts broke the mass free from the jar’s glass base and scooped it into a brown paper bag. ‘That’ll be sixpence.’
‘Why, Mrs Potts,’ said Percy, inspecting the small, sugary bag, ‘if we weren’t such firm friends, I’d suspect you of trying to fleece me.’
Outrage suffused the postmistress’s face as she spluttered a denial.
‘I’m joking, of course, Mrs Potts,’ said Percy, handing over the money. She tucked the letters and the rock into her bag and donated a brief smile. ‘Good afternoon now. I shall enquire after Juniper’s plans on your behalf, but I suspect when there’s anything to know, you’ll be the first to know it.’
TWO
Onions were important, of course, but that did nothing to alter the fact that their leaves brought absolutely nothing to a flower arrangement. Saffy inspected the feeble green shoots she’d just cut, turned them this way and that, squinted in case it helped, and applied whatever creative power she could muster to imagining them in place at table. In Grandmother’s heirloom French crystal vase they stood a fleeting chance; perhaps with a splash of something colourful to disguise their origin? Or else – her thoughts gathered mo mentum and she chewed her lip as was her habit when a grand idea was breaking – she might surrender herself to the theme, throw in some fennel leaves and marrow flowers and claim it a humorous comment on the shortages?
With a sigh she let her arm drop, hand still clutching the flagging fronds. Her head shook sadly, seemingly of its own accord. Onto what mad thoughts did a desperate person latch? Clearly the onion shoots would never do: not only were they hopelessly ill suited to the task, but the longer she held them the more potently their odour struck her as remarkably similar to that of old socks. A smell the war, in particular her twin sister’s occupation in it, had given Saffy ample opportunity with which to become familiar. No. After four months in London, mixing in the smartest Bloomsbury circles, no doubt, braving the air raid warnings, sleeping some nights in a shelter, Juniper deserved better than
Not to mention the guest she had mysteriously invited to join them. Juniper was not one to gather friends – young Meredith being the single surprising exception – but Saffy had an instinct for reading between the lines and, despite Juniper’s lines being squiggly at the best of times, she’d gathered that the young man had performed some act of gallantry to earn Juniper’s good favour. The invitation, therefore, was a show of the Blythe family’s gratitude and everything must be perfect. The onion sprouts, she confirmed with a second glance, were decidedly less than perfect. Once picked they mustn’t be wasted though – such sacrilege! Lord Woolton would be horrified – Saffy would find a dish to take them, just not from tonight’s menu. Onions and their after-effects could make for rather poor society.
Sounding a disconsolate huff, then doing the same again because the sensation so pleased her, Saffy started back towards the house, glad as always that her path didn’t take her through the main gardens. She couldn’t bear it; they’d been glorious once. It was a tragedy that so many of the nation’s flower gardens had been abandoned or given over to vegetable cultivation. According to Juniper’s most recent letter, not only had the flowers by Rotten Row in Hyde Park been flattened beneath great piles of wood and iron and brick – the bones of Lord only knew how many homes – the entire southern side was given over now to allotments. A necessity, Saffy acknowledged, but no less tragic for it. Lack of potatoes left a person’s stomach growling, but absence of beauty hardened the soul.
Directly before her a late butterfly hovered, wings drawing in and out like the mirrored edges of a set of fireside bellows. That such perfection, such natural calm, should continue while mankind was bringing the world’s ceiling down around it – why, it was nothing short of miraculous. Saffy’s face lightened; she held out a finger but the butterfly ignored her, lifting then falling, darting to inspect the brown fruits of the medlar tree. Completely oblivious – what wonder! With a smile, she continued her trudge towards the castle, ducking beneath the knobbled wisteria arbour, careful not to catch her hair.
Mr Churchill would do well to remember that wars were not won by bullets alone, and to reward those who managed to sustain beauty when the world was being blasted into ugly pieces around them. The Churchill Medal for the Maintenance of Beauty in England had a lovely ring to it, Saffy thought. Percy had smirked when she’d said so at breakfast the other morning, with the inevitable smugness of one who’d spent months climbing in and out of bomb craters, earning her very own bravery medal in the process, but Saffy had refused to feel foolish. Indeed, she was working on a letter to
Saffy adored London, she always had. Her future plans depended upon its survival and she took each bomb dropped as a personal attack. When the raids had been in full swing and the crump of distant anti-aircraft guns, the screaming sirens, the miserable explosions had been nightly companions, she’d chewed her nails feverishly – a terrible habit and one whose blame she laid squarely at Hitler’s feet – wondering whether the lover of a city might suffer its plight all the more for being absent when disaster struck, in the same way a mother’s anxiety for a wounded son was magnified by distance. Even as a girl Saffy had glimpsed that her life’s path lay not in the miry fields or within the ancient stones of Milderhurst, but amidst the parks and cafes, the literate conversations of London. When she and Percy were small, after Mother was burned but before Juniper was born, when it was still just the three of them, Daddy had taken the twins up to London each year to live for a time at the house in Chelsea. They were young; time hadn’t yet rubbed away at them, polishing their differences and sharpening their opinions, and they were treated – indeed they behaved between themselves – as a pair of duplicates. Yet when they were in London, Saffy had felt the early stirrings of division, deep but strong, within herself. Where Percy, like Daddy, pined for the vast, green woods of home, Saffy was enlivened by the city.
An earthy rumble sounded behind her and Saffy groaned, refusing to turn and acknowledge the heavy clouds she knew were gloating over her shoulder. Of all the war’s personal privations, the loss of a regular wireless weather forecast had been a particularly cruel blow. Saffy had faced the shrinkage of quiet reading time with equanimity, agreeing that Percy should bring her one book a week from the lending library instead of the usual four. On the matter of retiring her silk dresses in favour of practical pinafores she’d been positively sanguine. The loss of staff, like so many fleas from a drowning rat, and the consequent adjustment to her new status as head cook, cleaner, laundress and gardener, she’d taken in her stride. But in Saffy’s attempts to master the vagaries of the English weather she had met her match. Despite a lifetime in Kent, she had none of the countrywoman’s instincts for weather: she had discovered, in fact, a curious antithetical knack for hanging out washing and braving the fields on the very days rain was whispering in the wings.
Saffy marched faster, almost at a canter, trying not to mind the odour of the onion leaves, which seemed to be gaining strength as she gained pace. One thing was certain: when the war ended, Saffy was giving up country life for good. Percy didn’t know it yet – the timing must be right before the news was broached – but Saffy was going up
