very much for Mabel to boast about, and so Mabel was relieved to hear the sound of those returning to Tall Trees heading across the back yard.
The baby immediately stopped grumbling, at last fully engaged in her surroundings, and quickly swung her head with interest towards the door from the back yard into the kitchen to see who might be about to come in.
Mabel could hear Aiden pulling the bolt to the stable door across and then encouraging Milburn inside as he told Larry where the hay and straw was, and she saw Tommy push Angela’s chair to the back door. Mabel noticed the Ross family huddled together as they gave Tommy room to help Angela inside.
For a moment Mabel wondered at Ted Ross allowing Tommy to push Angela what looked like all the way back from the station to judge by Tommy’s pink face, but then she thought that actually for Tommy to have a bit of responsibility and to do something for somebody else wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, the episode to do with his bullying and the orchard affair being still rather a raw memory for all the Braithwaites, although the other children never seemed to refer to it.
Barbara bustled into the kitchen, which was smelling deliciously of the barm cakes baking for their dinner and Barbara could see what looked like a giant mixing bowl with bread dough proving on a warm part of the range.
Connie and Jessie stayed out in the yard in order to tug Ted, once he had set all the luggage down, good-naturedly across the yard and over to see for himself where Milburn was housed. Barbara undid her headscarf with one hand as with the other she plonked the wicker basket full of small thank-you gifts for Mabel – some homemade biscuits, a couple of new tea towels, a vest for Tommy and some hankies, several pork chops, some juicy-looking carrots and a very late dark-green Savoy cabbage that the caterpillars had only had the merest chomp on the outside leaves of – down on the rather battered kitchen table that had obviously seen many years of faithful service.
She and Mabel smiled in greeting at one another, and then Barbara raised her eyebrows in a quiet query as to where her sister Peggy might be.
Mabel put a finger in front of her mouth to signal silence, and then with Holly still in her arms she edged over to her guest and then stage-whispered in Barbara’s ear, ‘She’ll be jiggered, Barbara. There’s jus’ been an awful ding-dong on the telephone not more than twenty or so minutes ago betwixt her an’ Bill. She’s ’avin’ a quiet moment jus’ at present in t’ study wi’ a cup o’ tea to set ’erself to rights, but there no denyin’ it were right bad. She’ll be glad yer ’ere.’
‘Oh my goodness!’ Barbara hissed quietly back. ‘That’s unlike them. Poor Peggy… I can guess what he’s done, I suppose.’
Mabel said she hadn’t asked Peggy what the row was about, but she thought she’d heard Peggy moan the name Maureen as she had sobbed in her arms in the aftermath of the argument.
Then the two women shook their head at the thought of what was happening to a lot of couples during their enforced separations. Many relationships were suffering badly, and both of them were pretty sure that Peggy wouldn’t be the only woman in the land who had just had a big barney with her husband over another woman, while many men away from home drove themselves to distraction with dark thoughts of what their wives might be getting up to back on the home front without them. It wasn’t an ideal situation, no matter how one tried to look at it.
Barbara then saw that Holly was looking curiously towards her aunty and waving an arm in her direction, opening and closing her fingers, and so Barbara whispered to Mabel, ‘May I?’
With a rather relieved smile Mabel promptly handed her over, and after deeply inhaling the familiar scent of the young baby and then gently touching Holly on the head with her lips in a feather-light caress of hello, Barbara clutched her affectionately to her chest and went to find her sister.
She was taken aback a moment later to see how large and black the pupils in Peggy’s eyes appeared, and how pale her face was.
Peggy was totally still as she gazed with unseeing eyes out of the study window and down towards the hen coops on the far side of the garden, with the undrunk cup of tea by her elbow, and she didn’t notice that it was her sister who had come into the study.
It was only when Barbara said gently, ‘Peggy, my darling, whatever’s happened?’ that Peggy turned to face her.
For an instant Peggy’s brown eyebrows wrinkled in incomprehension and she looked confused as she gazed at Barbara.
And then she simply flung herself at her sister, leaving Barbara only a moment to move Holly out of the way. As Peggy broke once more into sobs, Barbara was able to feel hot tears on her neck as Peggy held her close in a vice-like grip. Barbara stood still as a rock and pulled her sister close.
The sisters didn’t say anything for a while, as Peggy was too upset to speak, and Barbara thought it best that this new wave of emotion be allowed to crest and then die of its own accord.
After a while Barbara contented herself with repeating ‘Sssssh, there now, there now. Sssssh, there now’ in the same way that she had comforted Jessie and Connie when they were colicky as babies.
Holly made some adorable snuffling noises and reached pudgy fingers towards her mother’s hair, but Peggy didn’t look at her and so Holly turned towards Barbara with a puzzled expression, causing Barbara to give her a jiggle of acknowledgement with her other arm and a smile, as she knew the baby would be feeling unsettled at these unfamiliar goings-on and the strange sounds coming from her mother.
When Peggy’s grip on her sister had reduced to less of a stranglehold, Barbara said, ‘Peggy, dear, we’ll have a long talk very soon, I promise. I want to hear all about it, really I do. But first why don’t you have a lie down and have a little rest? Take Holly up with you as to me she’s looking as if she still needs a bit more of a doze after her lunch, and then I’ll come and find you when I’ve got everyone else sorted and have caught up with Connie and Jessie. How does that sound, dear?’
Tiredly, Peggy untangled herself and then nodded a damp and exhausted smile of agreement, before she quietly slipped upstairs with her daughter cleaved tightly to her bosom. She felt done in, and now she could hear Connie and Jessie’s happy voices outside, she wanted to make sure that her tear-marked face wouldn’t dampen the party mood that was sweeping the rest of Tall Trees with Larry being back with them, and the pleasure of the unexpected visit from Barbara and Ted.
With a concerned expression, Barbara watched the sway of her sister’s disappearing world-weary steps with a tremendous pang of sympathy and trepidation, and then she sighed in empathy before she consciously made herself look happy as she turned to retrace her steps outside and find her husband and the twins.
Ted was full of surprises, it seemed.
‘Mother, you’ll never believe it,’ squeaked Connie breathily, her cheeks red with excitement as her mother joined her family. ‘But Father can drive a trap! And he’s going to teach us. He knows all about ponies, and he’s going to teach us everything!’
‘Oh, he can drive a trap, can he?’ Barbara raised an amused eyebrow in the direction of her husband, who winked in response. This was news to her, as was Connie’s use of the formal-sounding ‘mother’, but she supposed this was a sign of Connie getting older as perhaps ‘mama’ or ‘mummy’ seemed babyish, especially in front of the other children.
Ted grinned back at Barbara, causing her to shoot him a rueful, only half-amused grin in return. He’d never mentioned to his wife that as a child he had helped out at the local coal merchants, so much so that by the age of ten he had been allowed, after much begging, to take the reins on the delivery cart whenever he wasn’t at school.
Barbara prided herself on knowing all there was to know about Ted, and to learn this news so hot on the heels of discovering that something dire had happened with Bill that Peggy had had no idea about and therefore had been unprepared for, she felt now slightly peculiar and wrong-footed