‘Maddie,’ she corrected impulsively. Warmed by his infectious grin, she forgot that she was talking to a mere tradesman. Mummy would have had a fit had she been here.
‘I prefer Maddie,’ she finished awkwardly. It was what her friends at finishing school had used despite the rules forbidding the shortening of names.
‘I bet you’re Madeleine to your parents though,’ he chuckled, making her smile, in that moment feeling more drawn to him than she knew she should be.
There was a warm look about him, not just his smile but seeming to issue from him physically as if she could actually feel it. His arms about her would be warm. She had never had any man’s arms around her, wondered how it must feel and suddenly she wanted them to be his.
‘I guessed it was you,’ he was saying, bringing her abruptly back from her thoughts, ‘although I don’t ever remember seeing you before.’
‘I’ve just returned home after my two years education at a finishing school in Switzerland,’ she answered, trying to sound composed although her heart still thudded from those earlier thoughts.
He gave a little snort of self-derision. ‘Lucky you! Me, well, I was… educated, if you could call it that, a bit closer to home, local junior school here in Pilbridge. The three R’s and that was that – left at twelve years old to work with me dad, tending the cows, milking ’em and learning the ropes. That was it, really.’
It sounded sad but his smile remained so wide and cheeky that she found herself smiling with him.
It was then he made the comment that he thought her pretty, adding, ‘Hope you don’t mind me saying, but when I heard this family’s daughter was coming home from some finishing school abroad, in me mind’s eye I saw some gawky girl all full of herself. But you don’t seem like that and you’re far prettier than anyone I’ve ever met, if you don’t mind me saying.’
As she stood lost for a reply, he went on, ‘And by the way, my name’s Freddy Dobson. I work with me dad who has the dairy, the other side of the village. Dobson’s Dairies, do you know it?’
No, she didn’t. Most of her life had been spent away from home, her childhood in the care of a nanny until, as with most children of good families, she’d gone to boarding school; after that, college then finishing school. When home, recreation was visiting friends or they visiting her, any journeys would be in her father’s Wolseley-Siddeley motor car he’d bought new in nineteen twelve, just before she’d gone off to Switzerland and which he still ran.
‘It’s not a large place, me dad’s dairy,’ Freddy was saying, jerking her thoughts back to him. ‘It’s at the rear of where we live. That’s not all that large either, just a cottage, not like here where you live.’
Brookside, so named because the tiny River Pil flowing beside it was indeed more a brook than a river, was the last in a sprinkling of rather nice houses this end of the village. The road went on to Beaconsfield some five miles further along with little in between. There used to be a couple of farms and one or two smallholdings on the other side of Pilbridge but she couldn’t ever recall noticing a dairy. No doubt she would be obliged to pass it from now on, on her way to Gerrard’s Green, four miles off in that direction where Hamilton Bramwell’s parents lived in their big manor house.
But at the moment her thoughts were on the man in front of her, he now telling her that in between milking cows, cleaning out their stalls and delivering milk to the surrounding area, he was trying to educate himself by reading books in whatever spare time he had. Really she shouldn’t have been standing talking with him at all. Were her parents to see her she would be severely instructed that young ladies did not converse with tradesmen on a social standing. To families such as hers, despite him and his father owning their own dairy, they were tradesmen and as such should keep their place.
‘I usually deliver here on Monday, Wednesday and Friday,’ he said, breaking into her thoughts – though why tell her this, she wondered. It was an unnecessary comment unless he was trying to make it obvious that he hoped to see her again on those days – in fact almost too obvious.
Even so a tiny thrill had rippled through her as she replied maybe a little too quickly, ‘Then I’ll probably look out for you,’ trying to make her tone sound jocular to offset the strange excitement sweeping through her.
Today she hovered out front as she had these last two weeks other than both Wednesdays when rain had prevented her. It was Friday and he wouldn’t be here again until Monday, two days without seeing him instead of just one.
Her excuse for lingering out here in full view of everyone, which was how her mother had described it, was that she wanted to enjoy the warmth of the early morning sun on her face. Even so her mother hadn’t been at all pleased and said so.
‘I’d rather you didn’t, Madeleine. Much nicer to wait for the sun to move to the rear of the house when you can enjoy it in the privacy of your own garden. Standing in the front in full view like a common hawker…’
‘The sun isn’t so hot in the mornings, Mummy,’ she’d cut in. ‘And much fresher, and besides,’ she couldn’t help adding a little caustically, ‘hawkers and tradesmen always go to the rear door.’
Her mother had reacted with a touch of pique. ‘There is no need for sarcasm, my dear! I am merely suggesting that you display a little decorum if you must indulge in this odd habit you
