whole notion had set her back in the end. Mr Flitwick had taken over much of her kitchen garden work now that Mother had stopped the pretence of turning a blind eye and watched Emily even more closely so that her opportunities to attend to her herbs and vegetables grew fewer and further between.
Then summer came, and the warmth brought first Cecil, her younger brother, from his studies at Oxford, and then her older brother John, home on leave from the Front.
Cecil took up residence in the library, writing who knew what. He was always writing, or reading, or arguing the case of this and that.
For the first few days John was restless, and never in the house for long before he thought of somewhere he ought to be or something he ought to be doing.
‘Wherever is he?’ Mother asked her again and again. This time though, Emily knew where he was. Mr Tipton had lost even more men from the farm and asked for John’s help to discuss how they might fill the gaps.
‘I’ll go and tell him you want to see him,’ Emily told her mother, desperate for an excuse to leave. She found him mending the broken wain with Alfred, the farm’s oldest member of staff.
John had already cast the word out and that morning he’d recruited a couple of Belgian refugees and arranged to move them into one of the cottages at Perseverance Place.
To encourage him back up to the house, that afternoon Emily asked John to help her dig up the rose garden that sat at the edge of the terrace, so she could turn it into a vegetable garden. Mother perched in the window of the sitting room.
‘We’ve got an audience.’ John gestured as he thrust his spade into the soil beneath the roots of a stubborn rose bush that she’d not been able to dislodge herself.
Emily lifted herself up. Her breathing was heavy with exertion, her booted feet spread wide in the tilled soil to steady herself. Her skirts were tucked up in themselves and her hair had fallen out of its knot. Cecil sat beside Mother, smirking, while Mother’s mouth was gathered in a pinch, her brow furrowed.
‘I’m going to make the most of you being here to do as much outdoors as I can,’ she said. ‘She doesn’t belittle me in front of you.’
Emily joined John now to bend the rose bush into submission.
‘I’m sure she’ll get used to the idea of the Victory Garden.’
Didn’t he realise that it wasn’t the loss of the rose bushes that had upset Mother? She’d retrieved the newspaper article from her drawer to show him. He’d been the first person, beside Mrs Tipton, not to dismiss the idea.
‘Have you asked Mother?’ he’d asked.
‘I have, and Mr Tipton,’ she sighed.
‘Like that, is it?’
‘Yes, and I suppose …’
‘What?’
‘Well, I mean they’re probably right, aren’t they? What do I know about farm work really?’
‘What, you mean apart from following Mr Tipton about since you were this high?’ He held his hand beside his thigh. ‘And growing your own crops and your love of the outdoors, and your natural affinity with the animals?’ He shook his head.
‘All right, all right,’ she said. ‘But none of that means I could supervise a bunch of farm workers, not really. Mother probably is right …’
‘Would Father have built this place or opened the cement works if he’d questioned himself? You can’t give up that easily, Emily. They’ll train you, but I’ll bet you hardly need it.’
She smiled. He made it all sound so easy. It was true; she could do all the things he said, and Edna said she looked forward to her vegetables and herbs because they had the best flavour. Emily always kept quiet about her secret weapons; double digging and the manure she collected from Hawk’s stables to enrich the soil. Even Mr Flitwick said she had green fingers. But none of that meant anything if Mr Tipton and Mother wouldn’t listen, and even John’s golden charm couldn’t make light work of the situation.
*
It was Christmas in July at HopBine House. The last two days of John’s leave were a washout; the rain fell with a constant and unrelenting force, while heavy winds whistled around the house.
John said it was too frivolous to take a goose from the farm, but even without any of the trimmings, they lit the fire and hung stockings on the mantelpiece and she began to believe it really was Christmas. Especially being trapped inside the house with her mother, her grandmother – down for the night from London – and Cecil.
After lunch Emily slumped on the sofa, her hand propping up her chin while the rain lashed against the living-room window turning the view to a blurred grey.
‘Emily dear,’ Grandmother called from the other end of the sitting room. Grandmother had been in mourning since her son, Emily’s father, had passed away in 1913. Her hat was alive with twitching black feathers, and she hid behind a nose-length veil and a flowing black dress. ‘I’m in need of news of romance. Tell me. Do you have any? An attractive young girl like you, even one with that disconcerting hint of wildness, must have some young suitor in pursuit.’
‘Mr Tipton’s bullock is the only male interested in my sister.’ Cecil smirked.
‘Actually,’ Emily cut in, ‘I’m writing to an officer at the Front.’
As Emily took her seat at the piano, she noticed her mother was holding her breath, waiting. But she couldn’t meet her eye; Theo was a lowly corporal, a non-commissioned officer. If she dared to tell Mother the truth she’d say Emily was wasting her time and giving false hope to an unsuitable young man. But lowly or not, he’d been a ray of happiness, and she wouldn’t give him up easily.
‘He’s from Yorkshire, he’s very attentive and interested in me and my life,’ she said. That seemed to satisfy both Mother and Grandmother and so she stretched her fingers out across the keys.
‘Oh,’ Cecil whined. ‘Do you have to make that din?’ Deftly he turned the attention to himself. He hadn’t looked up from his book since he’d sat down. He’d even read it at the dinner table.
‘It’s a piano, Cecil,’ she retorted. ‘Not a brass band.’
‘Emily won’t play if you find it distracting,’ Mother said. ‘Emily dear, can’t you find a less invasive occupation?’ Mother’s gaze remained trained on her lap.
She sighed and slammed the lid shut. She could do no right. As it was, within a few moments Cecil had lost interest in his books and wandered out of the room in search of something new.
‘I would like to hear you play,’ said John. ‘Cecil?’ He called down the hallway. ‘Will you come back shortly for a game of charades?’
Cecil returned momentarily to poke his head around the doorway. ‘Anything for you, dear brother,’ he said.
Emily straightened her back and prepared to play. She hadn’t sat on this stool since before the war, before John had joined up, when they all came together in the evenings for piano music, song and laughter. They hadn’t done any of these things when it was really Christmastime, and John was away. It would have been wrong to carry on as usual without him. They hadn’t sung or played charades, either.
Grandmother and Mother stood beside Emily, while John leant an elbow on the body of the baby grand before them, where Father had done the same when he was alive. He warbled in a silly false tenor, his arms stretched out to accentuate his notes.
John took Mother’s hand. Emily had warmed up now, switched to a show tune, and John and Mother glided together to a foxtrot. Emily glanced up every now and then. Mother wasn’t hamming it up – she really did have style and grace. She gazed into her dance partner’s eyes with unbidden pride. Mother’s slim waist and hips meant she could pass for a woman John’s age, from behind. Her energy too. She was so often in