The Brooklands Girls Read online

  ‘I’d love to, but my friends are waiting for me.’

  ‘Bring them along too. The more the merrier. I can see Muriel, oh and there’s Milly Fortesque with her. Now, the party’ll begin if Milly’s here.’

  ‘You know Milly?’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ Jeff grinned. ‘She’s a regular here with Paul. We’ve been trying to get her to learn to drive for years, but she adamantly refuses. D’you know her?’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’m lodging with her at present.’

  ‘Then your life will be one long round of parties,’ he chuckled. ‘She’ll be making up for lost time now the war’s over.’ He frowned. ‘I didn’t see her for some time towards the end of the war. I’ve no idea what she got up to.’

  Pips said nothing. Perhaps, one day, she would enlighten him, but she wasn’t sure just how many more people Milly wanted to know what she’d ‘got up to’ in the war. She was saved from answering him by Milly and the others joining them.

  ‘Darling, how perfectly marvellous. I’m so proud of you. And your picture will be in the papers. Did you see all the photographers milling around you? And well done to Pamela too . . .’ She kissed Jeff on both cheeks. ‘You must both come to my party next Saturday night. Muriel and Pattie have already agreed to come. And Mitch and Paul will be there, of course. It’ll be a real Brooklands affair.’

  ‘I can’t wait.’ Jeff smiled at Milly and winked at Pips.

  Fourteen

  ‘My dear girl, how lovely to see you again.’ Dr John Hazelwood came towards her, his hands outstretched in greeting. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘Nor have you,’ Pips said, smiling at the small, rotund, jovial man with rimless spectacles and a bristling moustache.

  As they sat down at the table in the small restaurant where he had suggested they should meet, Pips said, ‘I hope you didn’t mind me contacting you.’

  ‘Of course not. How can I help?’

  Pips plunged straight in. ‘I’m appalled by the sight of so many soldiers begging on the streets. I want to do something, but I don’t know where – or how – to begin.’

  Dr Hazelwood beamed. ‘Do you remember Talbot House in Poperinghe?’

  ‘Indeed I do. It was set up by the Reverend Clayton as a place where the soldiers could have rest and recuperation during their time away from the front, wasn’t it?’

  The doctor nodded. ‘For a few days they could forget about the war, though I doubt they did. Well, I have opened up a house in Clapham for much the same purpose, though now it’s to give help and advice to those who are finding their return home very difficult. We can even give bed and board if it’s necessary, though most of them just need assistance to find their own way ahead. Marigold is still doing what she does best and raising funds, though it’s more difficult for her, now that the war is actually over.’

  Marigold Parrott had been a valued member of Dr Hazelwood’s flying ambulance corps. She had raised money, obtained equipment and supplies.

  ‘I’ll be sure to tell my mother. I know she’d want to help. But what can I do?’

  ‘Hazelwood House is run by volunteers. If you could spare a day or so here and there . . .’

  Pips beamed. ‘It’s just the sort of thing I’ve been looking for. I’d be delighted to help.’

  Over coffee they discussed details and then Dr Hazelwood asked, ‘Tell me, how is your brother?’

  Pips sighed and explained, ending, ‘We just can’t seem to get him to do anything.’

  Towards the end of the war, the Maitland family had welcomed convalescing wounded soldiers into their home. Robert had become interested in the effects of shell shock and had been encouraged to interview patients and write about his findings for medical journals.

  Dr Hazelwood nodded. ‘I feared as much. Your father said something of the sort in his last letter.’ He was thoughtful for a moment. Slowly, he said, ‘I will write to him again and encourage him to resume his work. His findings would still be very valuable.’

  ‘Next time I go to Lincolnshire, I’ll talk to him too.’

  By the time they parted on the pavement outside the restaurant, Pips’s step was lighter than it had been for years. At last there was something useful she could do and yet she could still enjoy Brooklands and Milly’s parties without feeling pangs of guilt.

  Now she could really feel she was living her life to the full.

  ‘Daisy! My, how you’ve grown!’

  With a wide grin, the little girl ran into Pips’s outstretched arms to be swung high in the air. ‘I’ll soon be free, Aunty Pips.’

  ‘So you will. And what would you like for your birthday?’

  Alice and Robert watched with indulgent eyes. After a non-stop round of parties in the city, even Pips had felt the need to return home for a few days at the end of September.

  Still carrying her niece, Pips sat down near the window. ‘So, how’s everyone? I haven’t seen Mother or Father yet. I expect he’s out on his rounds, is he? But where’s Mother?’

  ‘Gone into the city to see her friend Rosemary Fieldsend.’

  ‘How’s old Basil?’ The three of them smiled, remembering the major who, as ‘someone important in the war office’, had kept them well informed during the war.

  ‘He’s fine. A bit bored now that it’s all over.’

  ‘Your mother and Mrs Fieldsend seem to have the right idea,’ Alice said. ‘They’re still busy fund-raising, but for the wounded now. There are so many of them who can’t find any work at all and the weekly compensation allowance for the injured is hardly enough to keep a family.’

  Although Pips already knew that Robert was no longer studying shell-shocked patients, she decided to play the next few minutes very craftily, deciding not to mention, for the moment, anything about her meeting with Dr Hazelwood. ‘You know, Robert, that’s something else you could write about – the plight of the maimed. Have you done all you can do for the present on the effects of shell shock?’

  Robert pulled a face and shrugged listlessly. ‘I – sort of – lost interest.’

  Pips stared at him. ‘Lost interest?’ She glanced at Alice and then back to Robert. ‘Why? I thought at least you were still doing that.’

  ‘You tell her, Alice. I don’t want to talk about it.’ He got up suddenly and left the room.

  ‘Whatever’s happened? I thought he’d still got that to occupy him – something really worthwhile, if he still feels he can’t practise alongside Father?’

  ‘We all thought that – even Robert himself for a while – but I think talking to sufferers and then writing about it accentuated everything. He was reliving the past every day.’

  Pips was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Alice, would you mind if I talked to him?’

  ‘I’d be glad if you would. We’ve all tried, but he just brushes us aside. I know your poor mother feels it deeply that she can’t reach him.’

  ‘I’m surprised he doesn’t listen to you.’

  Alice sighed. ‘It hurts me – but no, he doesn’t. Not now.’

  Pips touched her hand and smiled. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll give it a lot of thought but before I go back to London, I will talk to him. And now, Daisy, let’s go out into the sunshine and teach you how to play croquet. I’m sure the small mallet I used to play with as a child must still be in a shed somewhere. And this afternoon, we’ll go and see Grandma Dawson, shall we?’

  With their day happily organized, Pips tried to put the matter of her brother’s idleness out of her mind, but it niggled away at her for the rest of the day.

  ‘Where’s Luke?’ Daisy asked as soon as they entered the Dawsons’ cottage after lunch that day.

  ‘He’s picking blackberries in the back garden,’ Norah said. ‘Do you want to go and help him?’

  Daisy nodded.

  ‘I’ll find you a bowl, duck.’

  ‘I’d better go out and watch them,’ Pips said, starting to get up.

  ‘No need, Miss Pips. Luke’ll watch her. He’s very good
with her. Very gentle and protective.’

  ‘Aye, he is.’ Ma nodded. ‘But a bit too much sometimes, Norah. He can be a bit possessive. He doesn’t like her playing with any of the other kiddies in the village.’

  The three women chatted for half an hour, though Pips kept getting up to look through the scullery window just to make sure that Daisy was all right. Maybe I’m getting possessive over her too, she thought with an inward smile.

  ‘How are you all?’ she asked Norah and Ma.

  Norah spread an old blanket on the kitchen table to do her weekly ironing. She picked up the heated flat iron from the hob. ‘Oh – you know.’

  Ma glanced at her daughter-in-law. ‘She’ll not mind me saying it to you, Miss Pips, but she’s lost. From having a houseful of her family to care for, she’s only got her husband and an old woman to look after now.’

  Norah picked up one of Len’s shirts and smoothed it out. ‘Everything reminds me of them,’ Norah murmured. ‘Even this. There should be a pile of men’s shirts to iron every week but now there’s only two. I wouldn’t have minded if they’d come back wounded. Even if they hadn’t been able to work no more. We’d’ve managed somehow. Len’d’ve worked twice as hard just to have ’em back home but . . .’ Her voice trailed away, but after a moment’s pause she spoke again, more strongly now. ‘But we mustn’t grumble. You’ve only to go into any church hereabouts and read the list of names of all those who didn’t come back. We’re not the only ones grieving.’

  ‘They’re starting to build a lot of war memorials and inscribe the names of the fallen on them. Have you heard if anything is planned for Doddington?’ Pips asked.

  The two women shook their heads.

  ‘It’d be nice, though,’ Ma said. ‘It’d be somewhere for us to go – a focal point – since we haven’t got a grave to tend.’

  ‘I do know where they’re buried,’ Pips said quietly. ‘Bernard and Roy are together and Harold is not far away. Maybe one day you could visit them, Mrs Dawson.’

  Norah opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment the two children came into the kitchen carefully carrying their bowls full of blackberries.

  ‘I showed her which to pick, Grandma,’ Luke said, grinning. ‘On’y the ripe ones, else she’d ’ave picked green ’uns an’ all.’

  ‘Hello, Luke. My, you’ve grown too.’ Pips glanced at Norah. ‘Isn’t he like his uncle, Bernard?’

  ‘Aye, he’s shot up just lately. Peggy has a job to keep him in trousers that fit.’

  ‘He’s going to be a big lad, like his other uncle – William,’ Pips said, without thinking.

  Puzzled, Luke glanced from his grandmother to Ma. ‘Who’s William?’ he asked innocently.

  ‘I put my size fives right in it. I’m so sorry, Alice,’ Pips told her sister-in-law when she returned to the hall. ‘I wouldn’t upset your mam and Ma for the world. I remember not to mention William in front of Len, but I totally forgot they don’t speak of him in front of the boy, though I should have remembered because they always make sure he’s out of the way every time I take them a letter to read. Oh dear.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Pips. What happened?’

  ‘Your mam just muttered. “He’s a relative and he was a big lad like you’re going to be.” Then she gave him a mug of tea and a sandwich to take up to his grandpa at his workshop and it seemed to pass off all right. Just so long as Luke didn’t ask Len who William was.’

  ‘Dad can’t go through life without William’s name ever being mentioned, even if he’d like to,’ Alice said tartly. Her sharpness was not aimed at Pips for her blunder, but at her father’s stubbornness. ‘It’s ridiculous the way he’s acting and so unfair on Mam and Ma.’ She sighed. ‘There’s nothing I can do about them, but I do so want to help Robert. Have you thought about what you could say to him, Pips?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Pips grinned. ‘Maybe a bull in a china shop would be the best approach with him.’

  Alice laughed too. ‘You do cheer us up, Pips. I understand why you want to be in London, but, please, don’t ever stay away too long, will you? We all miss you so much.’

  ‘Dear Alice,’ Pips said, giving her a hug. ‘And now, I will go and find Robert – just for a chat at the moment. I’ll bide my time about the other matter.’

  ‘He’ll be where he spends most of his time – in the drawing room gazing out of the window.’

  ‘And seeing scenes from the past, I expect.’

  ‘I fear so.’

  Fifteen

  As the family rose after dinner, Pips said, ‘I’ve set the chessboard up in the drawing room, Robert. It’s time I beat you. I must be losing my touch.’

  ‘I don’t really feel like it tonight, Pips. I’m tired. I think I’ll go up to bed.’

  ‘Nonsense. You can’t possibly be too tired for one game. You’ve done nothing all day.’

  She heard Alice gasp and her mother say softly, ‘Oh Pips . . .’

  For a moment, Robert glared at her and then he pulled a face and shrugged. ‘As ever, my dear sister is perfectly right.’

  They climbed the wide stairs side by side and entered the Blue Drawing Room on the first floor. Pips had set up the chessboard in front of the fireplace and they sat down on either side of it.

  ‘Actually,’ she began, ‘I don’t want to play – I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Ah, I was rather afraid you might.’

  Pips said, ‘Robert, what’s happened? Your moods are worse than ever and more frequent.’

  He sighed heavily. ‘Nothing’s happened. That’s probably the trouble. There’s nothing for me to do any more.’

  ‘Oh phooey. There’s plenty, if only you’d put your mind to it.’ She put her head on one side. More gently she asked, ‘Are you still getting nightmares?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And why have you given up your research into the causes of shell shock?’

  ‘It just makes it all worse. Talking to the men and then writing it all down. I just never get away from it.’

  ‘Do you anyway?’

  Gloomily, he said, ‘If I’m honest, no.’

  ‘It’s a shame you’ve given up on that work, Robert. I thought you wanted to help people. To be a doctor.’

  ‘How can I?’ he snapped.

  Unfazed, Pips said, ‘By doing exactly what you were doing. Researching the causes of the terrible mental anguish of the wounded. Emotional scars are every bit as bad as physical ones, but they’re not seen and understood by others, so in a way, they’re almost worse. With your medical knowledge and your own experiences – oh, I don’t mean losing your arm, I mean everything you saw out there too – just think, if you could come up with some treatment for the condition, or at the very least an understanding of it, that would be something, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘It might be a case of “physician, heal thyself”.’

  ‘Quite possibly, but in so doing, you’d be helping a lot of others too.’

  ‘It’s just that I’m trying my damnedest to forget, not still be steeped in it.’

  ‘You’ll never forget, Robert. None of us will. Why d’you think there’s this frantic effort to fill our waking hours with music and dancing – and drinking, it has to be said?’

  ‘Is that what you’re trying to do in London?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  ‘And can you? Forget, I mean.’

  Slowly Pips shook her head. ‘No, it’s impossible when every time you set foot outside the door there’s an old soldier standing on a street corner, maybe without an arm or a leg – or both – carrying a tray of matches in an effort to earn money to support his family. There are some that just stand there rattling a box and making no attempt to hide the fact that they’re begging. Poor devils!’

  ‘But I thought they were paid compensation – a weekly sum – a sort of pension?’

  ‘Allegedly – but I expect it’s scarcely enough to support a man, wife and several children, especially in the cities.’

&nb
sp; ‘I suppose what you’re telling me is that I should count myself lucky and stop feeling sorry for myself.’

  ‘Now, would I do a thing like that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can’t help remembering, Robert, I know that, but you are lucky in that you have the support of a loving family and there really is something useful you can do. You started to write about the effects of shell shock with Alice’s help, if I remember. Didn’t she type up your notes for you and weren’t you sending them through to Dr Hazelwood? I thought he was going to get them published in the right place for you?’

  ‘He was.’ He smiled wryly. ‘He’s still interested. He keeps badgering me too. In fact, I had a letter from him two days ago asking how my research was going.’

  Pips spread her hands. ‘There you are, then. Why on earth aren’t you getting on with it?’

  ‘Probably because you’re not here. Alice is a darling and I love her even more than the day I married her, but she daren’t talk to me quite as bluntly as you do. And poor Mother daren’t say “boo” to me.’

  ‘That surprises me. Mother was never the reticent sort. But I expect not knowing what you – what we – went through, she doesn’t quite know how to handle it. What about Father?’

  ‘He’s tried in his gentle way, but I suppose I needed your blunt approach.’

  ‘So, has it worked?’

  ‘All I can promise you, Pips, is that I’ll have another go. I still correspond with some of the men we had here as convalescents and the Lincoln Hospital will be able to put me in touch with a few more, I’ve no doubt.’

  ‘Good,’ Pips said, getting up and starting to move towards the door. ‘I’ll be going back to London at the weekend.’

  ‘Are there still more races before the end of the year?’

  Pips shook her head. ‘Only a motorcycle race meeting in October, but I have a date with an aeroplane and I want to see you back at work before I leave.’