Chapter 8 Lilias
Lilias
“Dad, Dad, Dad!”
Emerging into the garden from the house, where she had been doing a charcoal sketch of David from memory in her studio, Lilias was in time to see him clinging like a monkey to a dark-haired man who was squatting to return the hug.
David began to speak in a torrent of words, his voice muffled at first by close contact with his father’s chest. “Dad there’s chickens here, and this is Compass, and I’m helping to train him, and we’re planting onions at school, and .
. . oh, Dad.” Pressing his face against his father’s chest, the boy began to sob.
Tears instantly filled Lilias’s own eyes as she saw the shudder of his little body.
“I didn’t . . . know when I’d g-get to see you again. ”
“Sh,” said his father, holding his son close, “I’m here, aren’t I? Sh. There’s somebody here waiting to find out what this hullabaloo is all about.” The man stood, smiling at Lilias and lifting David up onto his hip as if he were a much younger child.
Lilias saw an attractive man who looked to be quite a bit older than Nadine, standing just a few inches taller than her own five feet five. The eyes sparkling at her were a deep brown; if David had his mother’s cheekbones, then he surely had his father’s eyes. Clearly the pair had a strong bond.
With an effort, Lilias pulled herself together and stepped forward with a smile. “You must be David’s father,” she said, only becoming aware that her hand was filthy black with charcoal when she held it out for him to shake.
“Can’t fathom what gives you that idea,” he said, clasping her hand firmly in his, his dark eyes amused. “Unless it’s this ragamuffin shouting it from the treetops. I’m Harry.”
“Lilias Carter-Brown,” Lilias replied, retrieving her hand. “I’m delighted to meet you. Sorry to be in such a state. I was just drawing a picture of young David, actually.”
Harry smiled at his son. “Blimey, artist’s model now, are you? As well as a dog trainer?”
“Auntie Lilias,” said David, “you’ve got black stuff on your face.”
Lilias’s hand flew to her cheek. “Oh, Lord, so I have. I’m always such a mucky pup when I’m working.”
Harry’s hand reached out towards her. “It’s this side,” he said, and suddenly her face was burning.
“Thank you,” she said, giving her face a rub with her handkerchief.
David was wriggling like a fish now, so Harry set him down on the ground.
“Come and see the chickens, Dad. I collect their eggs, and I don’t mind ’em pecking me or nothing.” And he yanked on his father’s hand.
“That all right?” Harry asked Lilias.
“Of course.” She smiled. “David knows to shut the gate to the henhouse, don’t you, David?”
“Got to keep Mr. Fox out, Dad,” David explained to his father. “Come on. Muriel’s my best hen.”
“I’ll put the kettle to boil,” Lilias called after them, David’s excited chatter reaching her long after she rounded the corner to the back door.
How very quickly the boy had become a part of the fabric of their lives.
Only a month or so had passed since Nadine’s departure, but in this time a routine had been established—a routine that included collecting the eggs and putting Compass through his paces before school, and reading a bedtime story before lights-out after supper.
David was constantly curious, and, without Nadine there to tell him to be quiet, he asked question after question as he familiarised himself with his new world.
He exhausted Ruth at times, but Lilias didn’t mind.
The prospect that she might lose the child’s company was a bleak one, for Lilias realised this might well be the reason for his father’s visit; to take David home with him. Oh well, there was nothing to be done about it. David was his son, and the decision lay entirely with him.
After filling the kettle and setting it on the stove, Lilias ran a wet flannel over her face, despairing at the amount of black charcoal it removed. Honestly, she must have looked like a coal miner out there. What must David’s father have thought?
“Dad, watch what I can make Compass do,” she could hear David saying outside the back door. Obviously they’d finished with the chickens.
“Better take these eggs in first, son,” came Harry’s voice, and next minute there he was in the doorway, his dark hair hatless as he held out his cap, which contained four white eggs.
“Lively girls, aren’t they?” he said. “Not sure I’d want to stick my hand under them the way David does.”
Lilias smiled, taking the eggs from the cap. “He’s certainly a plucky boy. He’s settled in here very well, actually.”
“I can see that.” Lilias sensed Harry might have been about to say more, but David called to him from outside.
“Dad!”
Harry smiled. “I’d better go and watch the David and Compass show.”
“I’m afraid my dog is rather unpredictable,” she warned him. “He only does his tricks if it suits him, and it never does suit him if there’s an interesting smell in the vicinity.”
Harry paused at the back door to smile at her. “A dog who follows his passions, is he?”
Lilias laughed. “Certainly.”
“Well, that’s not a bad thing in my book.”
As he went outside, Lilias reflected that Harry Smith did not appear to be a run-of-the-mill type of a man. He was charming and easy to talk to; not someone she would automatically have matched to the acerbic Nadine.
She crossed to the window to watch Compass and David perform, loath to go outside in case she was a distraction, and immediately saw the dog lying on his back with his legs in the air.
By the way he was moving around, Lilias could tell he was attempting to scratch his back in the dirt.
It was hardly the sit, stay, and come routine David had been practising with him, and yet David seemed quite satisfied.
“What’s he doing now, then?” Lilias heard Harry ask.
“Playing dead, of course,” David replied, and Lilias snorted with laughter and went to finish making the tea.
After it had brewed, she took the cups outside, and she and Harry stood drinking it, watching David as he chased Compass around the garden, the training demonstration over.
“It’s a boy’s paradise here,” Harry said. “Always has liked the countryside, David has. We go hop picking at a place called Paddock Wood in Kent for a couple of weeks every summer. Thinks he’s died and gone to heaven there.”
Lilias sipped her tea and looked at him over her teacup. “Isn’t it terribly hard work?”
Harry shrugged. “There’s work and there’s work, don’t you think?
You get paid for what you pick, and they’re mostly pretty good with the nippers down there.
The extra money certainly comes in handy.
Any extra money always does, doesn’t it?
Listen, I hope you don’t mind me just turning up like this? ”
The sun was bright, and Lilias shaded her eyes with her hand so she could return his gaze. “No, of course not. You’re more than welcome. It’s very nice to meet you.”
“I had to come and see for myself he was all right, you see,” Harry explained. “You know, what with Nadine going on about how awful it is here and everything.”
Lilias thought his eyes were twinkling but couldn’t be entirely sure. “Yes, I do see.”
“And now I am here, I can see exactly what she meant. I mean, it’s dreadful, isn’t it? Terrible. That’s if you’re the type who likes shopping and going to the cinema.”
Lilias had gone from smiling to frowning and back to smiling again. Now she asked, “Don’t you, then? Like shopping and going to the cinema?”
He shrugged. “You can keep shopping. The cinema’s good, though.
They’ve both got their place in the world, haven’t they?
But they’re not worth swapping your life for.
It’s what most work is, let’s face it. Swapping your life for fancy clothes and fancy things you could do without.
And I suppose when you’ve been through the last lot, you don’t forget how bloody precious life is.
” He looked at her. “Whoops; sorry, didn’t mean to swear.
Or rattle on. I’m not used to what they call polite company. ”
Lilias drained the rest of her tea and put her empty cup down in its saucer, which was resting on a low garden wall.
“I’m not sure people round here think of me as polite company.
I can be rather disposed to speak my mind.
It’s a trait that doesn’t always endear one to people.
I served in the last war, too—well, in the last few years of it anyway, as an ambulance driver.
As you say, that kind of experience helps get your priorities right. ”
“And here we are, all over again, eh? Who’d have believed it? Not me, that’s for sure.”
“No, indeed.”
They stood in companionable silence, watching boy and dog playing together. Then Harry said, “Listen, I can see David’s happy as Larry here. I got on the train this morning not knowing if I’d have company for the return journey or not, but I’d like to leave him here with you, if that suits?”
Relief made Lilias beam at him. “Of course it suits. We adore having David here. He’s such a lovely boy.”
Harry grinned at her. “There’s a hole in my heart with him gone, but it’s not half as big a hole as the one there’d be if a bomb took him.
Nadine’s got it into her head Hitler’s not going to bomb London, after all, but I reckon when he finally turns his thoughts in our direction, he’ll pound us good and proper. ”
Lilias wondered how old Harry was. Since he wasn’t serving yet, he must be fairly close to her age. And yet he looked youthful, and she wondered if that fact might attract some hostile reaction to his not being in uniform.
The garden gate opened. It was the post lady with a letter.
“Morning, Miss Carter-Brown,” she said, looking at Harry with interest.
Lilias recognised her aunt’s handwriting on the envelope as she took the letter. “Good morning, Edith. This is young David’s father. Come to check up on us.”
“You won’t get a better billet than this.” Edith grinned at Harry. “Proper landed on his feet, your boy has.”