Chapter 3 Lilias #2
“I hope you like dogs, David?” Lilias asked over her shoulder, relieved to see the humped hedges of Marsh House come into sight. It was beginning to get properly dark now, and it didn’t do for anyone—resident or newcomer—to be out on the marshes after dark.
“You’ve got dogs?” David asked with obvious delight. “What sort? What’s their names? Ma’s never let us have a dog. Hates them, she does.”
Of course she did.
“We’ve got one: Compass. He’s a Jack Russell cross. Bit of a mixture.”
“Why’s he called Compass?”
Lilias smiled at him. “Because when he runs off, he always comes back again. He’s got his own internal compass. But you’ll soon find out all about him, because here we are. This is Marsh House. Your home for the duration.”
Mrs. Symonds had left the porch lamp burning for them to provide a welcoming glow, and Lilias was grateful for this, even though she knew such things would soon have to be discouraged. One hardly wanted a welcoming glow for the Luftwaffe, after all.
“Come in, make yourself at home,” she said, speaking loudly to make herself heard over the excited barking of Compass on the other side of the door.
The dog surged out as soon as Lilias opened it, seeming more like four or five dogs than one with his pent-up energy, huffing and puffing excitedly as he jumped and weaved about.
“Come along, in you get,” Lilias said to him.
“I’ll give you your dinner in a minute, just as soon as I’ve got our guests settled in .
. .” Her voice trailed off as, glancing back, she saw that Nadine was literally frozen with fear.
Good grief. She wasn’t going to have to keep Compass shut away the whole time the blasted woman was living here, was she?
Trying to dredge a little sympathy from somewhere—Nadine had just uprooted herself and her son from all that was familiar and had a fairly lengthy train journey from the East End of London—Lilias opened the door to the front parlour, expertly preventing the dog from entering with her trousered leg.
“You wait in here, will you, while I sort Compass out? Then he’ll settle down, and I’ll show you to your room.
It shouldn’t be too cold in here. My sister’s been using the parlour quite a bit lately. ”
Although this state of affairs would have to stop as the autumn progressed, unless Ruth was prepared to go out and track down some illusive firewood herself.
Symonds was far too busy to be at Ruth’s beck and call all the time.
Thank goodness her sister was in town this week.
It seemed as if it was going to be a difficult enough task to settle these evacuees in as it was, without Ruth here complicating matters.
Closing the door on her two guests, Lilias fed Compass in the kitchen, then left him blissfully gobbling his food in front of the stove.
“Righto,” she said, going into the parlour with a bright smile on her face. “That’s the rascal seen to for now.”
Nadine was stroking the fabric of what had once been Lilias’s father’s favourite chair.
In its day, it had been an expensive piece of furniture, and it was still comfortable now, if a little tatty.
Lilias could never sit in it without remembering her father talking about one of his two great passions in life—literature and countryside management.
“There’s lots of paintings,” Nadine observed.
Wondering how such a short statement could sound like a criticism, Lilias smiled. “Yes, I’m an artist.”
“You did these?”
“Most of them, yes, except for the little portrait of my father. They’re all waiting to be sold, or else I’ve become too fond of them to let them go.”
She closed the door to keep the heat in, only remembering she had recently painted a picture of the garden on it when she saw Nadine gawping.
“I miss the garden in the winter when everything’s died down,” she said, annoyed that painting the back of the door suddenly felt like a childish thing to have done.
“I thought it would be nice to have a bit of a reminder of it. A bit like the decorations the Bloomsbury artists did in their house in Sussex.”
It was obvious from Nadine’s expression that she had no idea what Lilias was speaking about. David meanwhile seemed to be absorbed in a painting of fishing boats at Cley. “That one’s waiting to be sold,” she told him. “Although it’s not easy to make sales with this war on.”
“What does your husband do?” Nadine asked, and Lilias turned to face her, once again doing her best to suppress her instinctive dislike for the woman.
“I don’t have one of those. My fiancé was killed in the Great War. What about you? What’s your husband’s occupation?”
“He’s a carpenter. Didn’t really want us to come here, he didn’t. I expect he’ll come and fetch us home again if all this bombing they’ve been going on about doesn’t start soon.”
Lilias didn’t think she was imagining the challenge in Nadine’s voice and held back a sigh.
Let the woman’s carpenter husband come and get them as soon as he jolly well liked.
She’d get herself a nice dog-loving evacuee girl who would rub along with them all perfectly and help out with fruit picking and jam making.
“Come on,” she said a good deal more brightly than she felt, “I’ll show you to your room, and then I’ll go and get washed and changed before supper. I assure you I don’t always dress like a cow hand. Well, only about sixty percent of the time, anyway.”
Once in her bedroom, Lilias wondered what she would be doing now if Nadine and David hadn’t arrived.
Would she be getting dressed with such care?
Reaching round to straighten the seam in her stockings?
Securing the lock of hair that inevitably escaped from its confines?
No, not a chance. She would get changed if Ruth were here, otherwise her sister would go on at her about keeping up standards, like a mini mother.
But when she was alone, Lilias always wore her hair loose in the evenings.
And anyway, Ruth wasn’t here. She was up in town, trying to sort out her muddle of a marriage.
The stray piece of hair was, as usual, refusing to be tamed, and impulsively Lilias pulled at all the clips and fastenings, allowing her auburn tresses to cascade defiantly over her shoulders.
After all, the sooner her guests stopped being guests and became members of her household the better.
This war might be responsible for diminishing the amount of time she could paint, but she wasn’t going to allow it to diminish her.
When Lilias went downstairs, she heard the sound of voices coming from the front parlour and wondered whether Nadine and David were going to make the room their base. Perhaps she ought to have shown them into the kitchen when they’d arrived, dog or no dog.
“Ruth?” Lilias said, surprised to see her sister when she opened the parlour door. “I had no idea you were back.”
“I got a lift from Sheringham with Bert Cook.”
Lilias frowned. Bert was Percy Cook’s eldest son. “Ruth . . .” she started to say, but her sister just flapped a dismissive hand.
“I must say, you’ve chosen well, dear,” she said, changing the subject. “How lovely to have such good company. Nadine and I have been having a good old chin-wag about the upheaval in town.”
It was then that Lilias turned and caught the expression on Nadine’s face as she studied Lilias’s loose hair, and she had to resist the impulse to reach up to push it back from her face like a nervous girl.
Instead, she deliberately pushed back her shoulders and smiled.
So what if, at forty-one, her hair was losing some of its brightness?
She had no grey hairs as yet, and she liked to wear it long.
“I’m so glad you approve, Ruth, dear,” she said, going over to kiss her sister’s powdered cheek.
Ruth’s eyes were bright, her face expertly made up. There was no way to discern how her meeting with her estranged husband had gone. Although possibly her early return from London was a clue.
Sighing, Lilias straightened, crossing to draw the heavy curtains across the windows.
Ruth had only been married for twelve months, and Lilias still had no idea what had brought her home to Marsh House with her tail between her legs.
It must have been something serious, because her sister had always said how much she hated it here in the wilds of Norfolk.
She’d certainly always been desperate to escape, anyway.
“Where do you do your shopping?” Lilias heard her ask Nadine now. “I do like the dress you’re wearing.”
Lilias spoke quickly before a discussion about the latest fashions or clothes rationing could commence. “Where’s young David?”
It was Ruth who answered. “In the kitchen, I think. He wanted to play with the dog.”
Lilias frowned. She knew the boy would be safe with Compass, and so did Ruth. But Nadine didn’t.
“Perhaps we’d better go in there?” she suggested. “Mrs. Symonds left us some stew, and I don’t know about you two, but I’m famished.”
They found the boy on the rag rug, half in and half out of the dog basket, fast asleep and cuddled up next to Compass. Clearly David had found himself a protector.
“The poor mite’s exhausted,” Lilias said with an affectionate smile. “And who can blame him, after what he’s been through today? Do you want to leave him there while we eat, Nadine? Or will you put him to bed?”
“Darling,” said Ruth, “only you would think that leaving a child to sleep in a dog’s bed with the dog was a realistic option. Shoo him off so Nadine can get to her son.”
“Oh, all right.” Reluctantly—because the pair looked so settled and comfortable—Lilias did so. “I’ll take Compass outside for a minute. Serve out the supper, will you, Ruth, while Nadine puts David to bed? I’ve got the bedroom on the right ready for him, Nadine. Come on, Compass!”