Maggie's Girl Read online

  And then the car manoeuvred through the ornate wrought-iron gates and she saw all the daffodils lining the driveway, marvelling at their beauty and craning her neck to look back.

  Then Stokes spoiled it all by taking the side drive round to the back of the house. Did he think she was still the nursemaid here?

  Colour flooded her face. She’d been invited. She was blowed if she was creeping in the back way!

  She scrambled quickly out, straightened her coat and walked smartly past a surprised Stokes, round the side of the house and up the steps to the front door.

  She pulled the bell and waited. She had every right to be here.

  The door swung open, and Stamps bowed to her, his face impassive as ever.

  ‘Good afternoon, Stamps!’ She smiled, her eyes twinkling. ‘I’m here to see the mistress.’

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Bates. If you’d care to come this way.’

  Inside, Maggie shed a good fifteen years. Everything was exactly as she remembered. The parquet floor, the potted plants, the chair next to the telephone where the mistress liked to sit when she was waiting for Silas – or where Adèle used to sit. Her grandmother.

  It even smelled the same; pot pourri, lavender polish and beeswax.

  She followed Stamps upstairs, and was brought up short by the portrait on the landing.

  Ned Bradshaw, her father, boyishly good-looking, his arm thrown carelessly round his brother’s shoulders, looked out with amusement – sizing her up, as she was sizing him up.

  Was she like him? Her hand stole to her cheek. Was she imagining the similarity? Should it matter, when she’d always considered herself Peter Bridges’ daughter?

  A discreet cough brought her to her senses. Stamps stood impassively at the head of the stairs, and wouldn’t he have a tale to tell! She tore herself away reluctantly.

  ‘There you are, Maggie, dear. Do come in!’ Adèle stood aside at her sitting-room door, her eyes full of suppressed amusement. Intrigued, Maggie stepped past her into the room.

  ‘Oh!’ She gasped. A frail white-haired figure sat on the sofa. Sharp lines carved tracks across her face, but there was still no mistaking who it was. Eyes sharp as ever regarded Maggie with a warmth she’d rarely seen.

  ‘Don’t be standing there with your mouth open!’ Nanny Coates scolded, her head nodding. ‘I expect you thought I was busy pushing daisies up long since?’

  The voice, still so vibrant, took Maggie straight back to the nursery, when she’d spilled the milk or left the laundry cupboard untidy or let little John Bertram run wild.

  ‘Oh, Nanny!’ Delighted, she reached for the trembling hands, bunched with arthritis, cradling them gently between her own.

  ‘Nanny came to see the opening of the factory!’ Adèle laughed. ‘She’s been simply longing to see you, haven’t you, Nanny?’

  The other two women didn’t answer, busy gazing at each other.

  ‘I’ll organise some tea,’ Adèle murmured, and stole out, not sure if either had even heard.

  ‘There, don’t take on. Let me look at you!’ Nanny’s hands broke free, patting Maggie’s with surprising tenderness. She endured a keen and searching gaze.

  ‘Too thin by far!’

  ‘Yes, Nanny,’ Maggie admitted.

  ‘You’ve been ill!’ It wasn’t a question. Nanny had made up her mind.

  ‘I’m better now, though.’ Maggie realised that she still wanted more than anything to please this cantankerous old woman.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about your young man.’

  Nanny had lost her young man, too, Maggie remembered. She’d told her about it that day she’d given her time off to see Hughie when they’d fallen out.

  Nanny shifted in her chair.

  ‘I hoped marriage would improve you. You always were an addle-pated girl; I imagine time’s knocked some sort of sense into you?’

  ‘Nanny, I was never addled,’ Maggie protested hotly, and the old eyes narrowed in delight.

  ‘And you always did have a mite too much to say for yourself! I always wondered where you got it from, you know. That’s never come from a miner, I used to think.’

  So Nanny knew about Ned Bradshaw and her mother. Sometimes Maggie felt as if she’d been the last one in the world to find out.

  ‘I didn’t know anything about that when I was working here.’ She’d been precisely what she appeared, a raw factory girl yet to find her feet.

  ‘My mother should have told me!’ she burst out, with a passion startling even herself.

  ‘Aye, well, the poor woman must have had her reasons. Perhaps she didn’t want reminding.’ The old head bent towards Maggie’s.

  ‘Young Ned always was a wild one, but he’d have wanted to do right by your mother. His father was too big an obstacle.’

  So it was Silas Bradshaw’s fault!

  Why hadn’t she thought of that before? But she knew. Because she’d been too busy feeling slighted that Daisy hadn’t told her the truth all these years.

  At that moment Adèle returned, followed by Stamps and a tray of tea. There was even a plate of fancies made by the woman who came up from the town each day – Cook and the maids had left long since. Only Stamps and Stokes, too old for active service, remained from Maggie’s time.

  She stood up, looking round at the comfy sofa, the walnut writing desk, the table crammed with pictures of Ned and Clifford.

  They sat talking over old times until Nanny’s eyes began to close and her head nodded. Adèle rescued her teacup, leaving her to doze quietly in the winter sunshine.

  ‘I’d best go.’ Maggie rose to her feet. ‘No, thank you, I don’t need the car. Thank you for doing this.’ She smiled at her grandmother, cast a last glance at Nanny, snoozing peacefully, and ran back down to the hall.

  ‘Maggie?’ The familiar voice stopped her in her tracks, and Silas came hurrying out of his study, where he’d been sitting with the door wide.

  ‘You must go home in the car.’

  ‘I’ll walk, thank you, Mr Bradshaw.’

  ‘“Mr” Bradshaw still, Maggie?’

  ‘I can hardly call you Grandfather!’

  ‘But that’s who I am.’

  She regarded him steadily, and wished her feelings towards him weren’t so ambiguous. He was far too pleased with himself, and wanted his own way too strongly. And yet …

  She’d worked on the wards, she knew which patients needed more reassurance, an intuition Sister Aspen believed made her a good nurse. Her every intuition was telling her that under this fierce and confident surface was a surprising vulnerability.

  Her professional eye noted, too, his high colour.

  ‘Are you feeling quite well?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course!’ he blustered. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s really none of my business.’

  ‘Oh, Maggie, of course it’s your business!’ His eyes searched her face, seeing Ned in its every line and contour.

  ‘I’m better for seeing my granddaughter,’ he added.

  ‘I used to work for you once!’ she reminded him. Why must he keep on about the family connection.

  ‘Fiddlesticks, woman! We must put that behind us and start again.’

  ‘Forget who I was?’ She raised an eyebrow. She’d have this out with him once and for all.

  ‘You didn’t want me then!’ she pointed out.

  They both knew if Silas had still had his sons, he’d be looking to a different kind of future. What would he have wanted then with a factory girl’s lass?

  At least he didn’t try to deny it.

  ‘I didn’t know the circumstances,’ he muttered. ‘You’re being unfair! Why didn’t your mother tell me?’ He paused, rubbing his hand through his thick shock of hair.

  ‘I’d have done what I could! Do you think I was so hard-hearted I’d have left her alone at such a time?’

  Something Nanny had said sprang into her mind.

  ‘But your own son couldn’t come to you! It ma
de me mam think she wasn’t good enough. She was ashamed to tell you!’

  She was surprised to see Silas looking suspiciously moist eyed.

  ‘We all make mistakes.’ Silas moved closer, gazing resolutely into her face. ‘I made one, and I’ve suffered for it, but – dash it all, Maggie, I’m sorry!’

  His words took them both by surprise – he’d touched a chord in his granddaughter, and he knew it. His fierce eyes held hers.

  ‘I never wanted you to suffer,’ she answered steadily, a match for him in every way he admired.

  A great swell of pride rose in Silas’s breast. She was a Bradshaw!

  ‘You’re sure there’s nothing I can do for you?’ His voice softened.

  How sorry for himself he looked! She shook her head. Then she felt a bubble of joy rising within her.

  What she said next amazed them both.

  ‘There is something you can do. Shut your eyes to what I do next – Grandfather.’

  ‘Look who I’ve found on the doorstep!’ Daisy ushered the young, touchingly uniformed figure into the living-room where Holly was busy setting the table for tea. They’d just got back from the hospital.

  Holly spun round, her eyes widened in astonishment.

  ‘Alec!’ she cried.

  ‘Pleased to see me?’ He was grinning idiotically.

  ‘You’ll stop and have a bit of tea, lad?’ Daisy’s brows knitted as she worked out the rations. Maggie would be eating at the hospital when her shift allowed. Peter wasn’t coming until later, so—

  ‘Harry, nip upstairs and fetch down one of those tins of fruit, there’s a good lad.’

  Daisy didn’t often dip into her emergency store, laid down with foresight, but this was an emergency.

  ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble, Mrs Bridges.’ Alec smiled.

  ‘It’s no trouble, son. As if we can’t feed one of our own brave lads!’

  She thought briefly of Billy – but Billy was a brave lad, too, working long, dangerous hours down the mine, standing up for his beliefs whatever other folk might think.

  Daisy went through into the kitchen and began the perplexing business of eking out tea for one more healthy appetite.

  ‘Why didn’t you say you were coming?’ Holly was still standing with the milk jug in her hand.

  ‘Twenty-four-hour pass,’ he explained sheepishly. ‘Besides, I wanted to surprise you …’

  How tall he was – how handsome! Colour stained Holly’s cheeks.

  She didn’t feel spoony about him, so why was her heart fluttering as if it had taken on a life of its own? Then she laughed. It was only Alec, after all. She’d been surprised.

  ‘How long have you got? Are you going back to Scotland? How’s training? Goodness, Alec, I bet your parents were glad to see you …’ She was off, firing questions so rapidly that he couldn’t keep up. After a while, he didn’t even try.

  ‘My posting’s come through,’ he told her quietly when finally he could get a word in edgeways. ‘The Sherwood Foresters. It means action, I should think!’

  He pulled out a chair and sat down, his face shining with enthusiasm.

  ‘I mean to volunteer for the Commandos eventually of course, but this’ll do.’

  Holly’s eyes grew serious.

  ‘Don’t worry!’ He’d guessed her thoughts, a habit of which he was altogether too fond. ‘Holly … you know me … I’ll always think safety first. You know it’s what I want.’

  ‘You’d better duck, Browning!’ She made a joke of it, not knowing how else to handle things. What else could she say? Tell him she’d realised suddenly this really was a war?

  Some of the joy had gone out of the evening with his news, much as she tried to pretend otherwise. Alec knew it, too; she was aware of his eyes, serious and a little puzzled as they ate the tea Daisy had conjured up.

  She’d done him proud, even if the inevitable tin of Spam featured in the meal.

  Granddad arrived next from the Home Guard meeting, picking good-naturedly at the remains of the meal, pumping Alec about the war and what he thought of the situation now Singapore had fallen – as if, in uniform, Alec’s words held extra weight.

  Perhaps they did. Alec did seem different. Or was Holly the one who’d changed?

  She was relieved when it was time for the bus, and a chance to get him alone. With indecent haste, she fetched their coats, ignoring Harry’s smirk.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Alec asked quietly, as soon as they’d let themselves out into the dark street.

  She nodded unhappily. The night was pitch black, and freezing already. They walked on with the muffled shapes of the houses as their guide, Alec’s Army boots clattering beside her, comforting somehow.

  You’d never guess Castle Maine was below, with no sign of a light. How Holly hated the black-out!

  He took her hand, plunging it into the pocket of his greatcoat, keeping it warm, and her heart, too.

  ‘Alec, look after yourself.’ That was what it boiled down to. ‘You’ll be so far away …’

  Misery engulfed Holly suddenly. Alec inhabited a world so unlike her own, a grown-up one she longed to be part of.

  His next words filled her with wonderful, trembling hope.

  ‘I can’t stop thinking about you, Holly.’

  He stopped in the road and pulled her close. A little clumsily, she leaned into him, tilting her head as his lips came down on hers, tentatively at first and then, finding them delightfully unresisting, with a growing passion and hunger, unnerving them both.

  Holly’s head began to spin, her every sense caught up in his. To her giddy mind, they seemed no longer Alec and Holly, young and unsure of their feelings, but one hot and searing emotion reaching out in darkness …

  ‘No! Alec, we mustn’t—’

  She found sense from somewhere and pushed him away, her eyes wide, part of her longing for him to kiss her again. He did, but gently this time, lingeringly.

  Where had this come from? What were these feelings? She’d never felt like this about John!

  ‘I’m sorry.’ But he didn’t sound at all contrite.

  ‘Don’t be.’ She was painfully shy now, wondering what he could possibly see in her, still at school, still stuck in Castle Maine. How impossible it was!

  She could already hear the bus.

  ‘Alec, when will I see you again?’ Her voice was urgent.

  ‘Soon. I’ll write—’

  He kissed her once again fiercely as the bus drew up, two pinpricks of blue light visible from the shrouded headlights. And then he was gone, leaping up the few steps. The bus drove off, swallowed up instantly into darkness.

  Holly’s heart went with it, every yard of the way.

  ‘There! That should brighten things up a little!’

  Maggie spun round from the bedside table where she’d just arranged a glorious bunch of bright daffodils. These flowers, together with the two darling little babies in the cot at the foot of the bed, should cheer Mary up, if anything could.

  The ward was quiet, sunk in the torpor of early evening.

  ‘But where did they come from, our Maggie?’ Mary was sitting up, fastening her bed-jacket, a little colour in her cheeks for once, watching Maggie with a curiosity it did her sister good to see.

  ‘You’ll never believe it!’ Maggie chuckled as she sat on the bed, taking Mary’s hand.

  ‘Would you believe – Silas Bradshaw?’

  ‘Your grandfather!’ Mary’s face expressed incredulity. ‘But I thought …’

  Maggie laughed out loud, remembering Silas’s face.

  ‘I’d been up to the house to see Nanny Coates,’ she explained. ‘He wanted to send me home in the car, but I said I’d rather walk. He asked if there was nothing at all he could do, and he looked so very sorry for himself—’

  Mary suddenly understood.

  ‘Maggie, you didn’t!’

  ‘Mary I did!’

  The two sisters fell into each other’s arms, laughing.

/>   ‘All his beautiful daffodils – on the verges, all the way up the drive … two armfuls! I took some for Mam, filled every vase in the house and one from next door.’

  Maggie could still see those two ribbons of gold edging the drive, where the sweeping lawns had been laid down to vegetables. What must Mam have thought?

  ‘Our Maggie’s gone soft!’ Mam would say, though touched. Maggie, who’d never bought her mother flowers, had suddenly desperately wanted to. The sight of Silas’s daffodils had simply proved too much!

  ‘But what on earth did Silas say?’ Mary asked, wide-eyed with enjoyment.

  ‘He didn’t get the chance! I was gathering them up, and it was too late.’

  She’d shocked him, but then he’d started to laugh, the great Silas Bradshaw, standing at his door, hands on hips, urging her on. She’d rarely seen him laugh before.

  ‘Oh, our Maggie!’ Mary wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘I wish I’d been there, too!’

  ‘Maggie! There you are.’

  A man’s voice. Maggie looked up sharply, and Mary, after one glance at the door, gazed back at her sister.

  Maggie looked surprised, disbelieving, and then simply joyful.

  There in the doorway was Dr Andrew Hardaker, looking at her with a longing he wasn’t quite astute enough to hide.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Watch that butter, our Maggie!’ Her precious ration! Daisy Bridges tut-tutted. She was deftly slicing bread, Maggie buttering, too generously to her mother’s mind, before spreading the potted meat Daisy had managed to exchange for three eggs in the shop that morning. The eggs from Peter’s hens were proving a real boost.

  ‘It is the twins’ first birthday,’ Maggie reminded her gently, as a piercing shriek arose from the front room, and they both laughed.

  ‘I wonder what our Holly’s up to this minute!’ she mused, concentrating hard.

  ‘It’s probably a good thing we don’t know.’ Daisy knocked the crumbs from the bread-board, unable to think of their Holly in the ATS, in London on her own.

  She returned the loaf to the bread-bin and filled the sink with hot water from the kettle.