divide with the best of them.
‘Any difficulty with that, Grace?’
‘No, Lady Alice.’
‘Ten times four pence halfpenny?’
‘Three and nine pence.’
‘Bravo. I won’t insult you by asking you to divide farthings.’
‘I liked arithmetic. We had a dragon for a teacher and, every Friday morning, she used to write a circle of numbers on the board and then she’d yell questions at us, and in no order so you couldn’t work it out ahead, if you know what I mean. Some of us were pretty thick but we all learned to count.’
‘Fascinating.’
The tone with which the word was uttered made Grace want to curl up. Instead, she closed her eyes, knowing perfectly well that if they turned round, the two in the front could still see her even if she could not see them. She made a rather childish vow never to speak to Lady Alice again.
The only sounds in the lorry before they arrived in the village were rather distressing noises from the engine and the occasional clunk as churns brushed against one another. The lorry drew to a halt. Grace and Jack got out and walked around to the tailgate, so as to reach the milk. For a slender man, Jack was surprisingly strong. It took two men to lift the churns on as a rule and, although Jack asked for Grace’s help with the largest churn, he appeared to lift the smallest one easily.
‘Which side, Grace?’
Grace shrugged and filled her jug. She sniffed and moved quickly away to the first house.
Jack was waiting for her as she finished.
‘Are you all right, Grace? I can easily do the round if you’re not feeling well.’
Grace was determined to pull herself together. ‘I’m fine, Jack. I just feel stupid.’ She looked in the jug, to make sure she had enough milk, and went off next door. When she came out, Jack was beside the lorry and Grace could see Lady Alice in the cab, looking at a piece of paper.
‘Let me fill that for you.’ Jack moved as if to take Grace’s jug and she pulled it back, and somehow it fell, smashing into several pieces.
‘Blast.’
Grace shouted so loudly that Lady Alice opened the door and looked out.
‘It’s only an old jug, Grace. Pick up the bits without cutting yourself and get another one. There should be several in the back.’
‘Yes, Lady Alice.’ Grace bent down, picked up the pieces and put them in a small heap beside the tailgate.
‘Brush up the tiny bits, girl; there are barefoot children in this village.’
‘Yes, Lady Alice.’ Grace found the broom and the shovel in the lorry and did as she had been told, then took a larger jug and filled it with milk.
‘Yes, Lady Alice, yes, Lady Alice,’ Grace muttered to herself. ‘Damn it, I wasn’t going to speak to her again.’ She realised immediately that she was being rather silly and felt even sillier when she heard Jack trying to stifle laughter as he filled his jug. She did her next deliveries efficiently and returned to the lorry to refill the jug, handing over the milk money given to her by one of the customers who would not be at home on the next morning. ‘One and three pence halfpenny from Miss Shield. She’s short a farthing …’
‘… but will pay next week,’ Lady Alice finished for her. ‘If I had all the farthings out of which that seemingly charming old woman has diddled my family, I would be spending the winter months in the Bahamas, Grace. The winters after the war, of course.’
The deliveries completed, Jack drove the lorry back to the estate. Lady Alice sat in the passenger seat and Grace, once again, was squeezed in behind.
‘Are you fearfully uncomfortable?’ asked Lady Alice, who did not wait for an answer but carried on: ‘It’s perfect that you’re not too tall, isn’t it? I had a dear chum at school, taller than my father, poor girl. She could never have squashed down like you.’
The words ‘I had a very tall friend at school, too’ popped onto the tip of Grace’s tongue and she felt so proud because she managed to swallow them. Lady Alice would have no interest in the Rose Petries of this world. There, of course, she wronged Lady Alice.
‘Back to ditches for you, I’m afraid, Jack,’ said Lady Alice when she had pulled up outside the front door of the main house, ‘but it’s going to be so useful to have another driver about the place. If you do Mondays and Saturdays from now on, and the occasional extra day when I have to be in two places at once, then I can manage the other mornings. Reasonable?’
‘Absolutely, m’lady.’
Lady Alice jumped down lightly from the driver’s seat and began to walk towards the door. Before she reached it, she turned. ‘No harm in teaching Grace either; just make sure she doesn’t crash.’
Grace and Jack watched Lady Alice until the door closed behind her.
‘She didn’t mean that?’
‘Of course she did,’ said Jack. ‘If it makes you feel better, think of it as another task the upper classes can inflict on you. If you can drive, she won’t have to hire a driver.’ He looked into her face. ‘What a bundle of doubts you are, pretty little Grace. She’s a decent human being. Look at the way she treats Harry and me.’
‘This morning, you said she terrifies you,’ Grace said, and was pleased that he looked uncertain. ‘Besides,’ she went on, ‘you’re almost a doctor and you can drive.’
‘Yes, and she wonders why I’m not driving ambulances at the front instead of digging ditches in Bedfordshire. Come on, we’d best get this back and the churns cleaned before we start the day’s work.’
Without waiting for Grace to say anything else, Jack started the lorry and drove down the back driveway to the dairy. There, they unloaded the churns, not nearly so heavy now that they were empty, and carried them into the dairy, where Walter was waiting to help them scrub them clean.
‘Maybe you should teach Walter to drive, Jack,’ Grace teased.
As she had expected, Walter looked horrified at the thought. ‘Not me, lad, I’m a horseman. Always was, always will be.’
He told them how he had done the milk deliveries for years with a horse and cart. ‘And he gave us good manure into the bargain. Can your engine beat that, Jack, lad?’
‘Horses win hands down, Walter.’
In better spirits, Jack and Grace left the dairy. Grace’s mind was still full of his description of her: ‘pretty little Grace’. I’m not little, she thought, and Mrs Petrie always said I was pretty if too thin, but what Jack said about my ‘bundle of doubts’ – I don’t like that much. Do I doubt people? Am I not too ready to think the best of them? Yes, I am, she answered herself, and then I find I’m wrong. Honesty then demanded that she add: but not all the time.
‘Jack, why does Lady Alice wonder why you aren’t driving ambulances at the front … if I can ask you, that is?’
‘Of course, you may ask anything you want, Grace. Asking questions is a really good way to learn. It’s like this: I just cannot bring myself to believe that it’s right to take another person’s life. I know that I could not possibly shoot another human being.’
‘Not even if he was a German.’
‘Not even. Grace, I think we would find that lots of the German people don’t want to be at war, don’t want to shoot at us, bomb our towns. There must be objectors among them, too. Maybe their government says, “Right, you don’t want to kill people, but we have to have someone driving ambulances.”’
Grace was not sure that she completely understood, but she nodded as if she did. ‘And should our government have asked you if you’d like to drive an ambulance?’