The Magic Hour Read online

  ‘Hop in!’

  Mrs Chisholm always said that, her careworn face looking momentarily eager, and at the same time concerned, because they all knew that if the van paused too long and stalled, she might not ever get it started again.

  Alexandra was always grateful to hop in, but never more so than on half-days at school – Thursdays and Saturdays – days when the other children did sport, and Mrs Chisholm had stopped by the fish-and-chip shop in town, and the most delicious smell imaginable was rising from under the old copies of the Daily Mirror and the Sunday Pictorial, in which old Mr Peters the fishmonger had wrapped the food.

  Although food rationing had hardly touched their part of the world after the war, and the village fish-and-chip shop had been doing a brisk trade for some years, Alexandra’s gran would have had a fit if she knew what was being offered her granddaughter for lunch. But to Alexandra, the smell of that fried fish wrapped in newspaper was the best smell in the world, most particularly when it was raining outside and the windows of the car were steaming up with the heat of everyone’s bodies, not to mention the two retrievers who were usually found to be lying protectively across the precious parcels.

  Mrs Chisholm was slim and blonde, with a permanently vague smile, which her daughter, Frances, always maintained masked at least one completely deaf ear.

  ‘You have to run round the front to talk to her,’ she would remind Alexandra, and then she would add, ‘That’s why she shouts, but she won’t wear one of those big brown leather hearing aids because she thinks they’re not elegant. If they made them look more like Dior handbags, she would wear them, but because they look like binoculars in a case, she won’t.’

  Alexandra didn’t mind Mrs Chisholm’s shouting in the least. In fact she liked it, the way she liked everything about Mrs Chisholm, probably because she knew that Mrs Chisholm liked her.

  ‘It’s a good thing that your grandmother can’t see you now!’

  She would shout something like that at Alexandra when Alexandra was in the middle of happily stuffing her face with chips, and then she would wink and turn away, half running, half walking back to the stable yard where she kept horses at livery for Londoners who came down at the weekends to hunt.

  Alexandra’s grandmother would never let Alexandra ride horses, maintaining that it was too expensive and anyway only snobs rode. Mrs Chisholm could never afford to keep an animal that didn’t make her money in some way, so she would never keep a pony just for Frances, on account of the expense, so this meant that as they were growing up a great deal of Alexandra and Frances’s holidays were spent on the Stamford farm trying to ride cows.

  Unhappily the cows proved less than satisfactory, at first ignoring the girls’ efforts to scramble on to their backs, then cantering off in the opposite direction the moment they threatened to be able to get a leg over them. Sometimes as they sat on a gate staring at their recalcitrant potential mounts grazing away in the field, more well-off local families would trot by on smart horses and ponies, and smart riding people who came down from London for the weekend would often stop to chat to the two girls. This enabled Alexandra and Frances to admire their crisp white stocks, their shining black boots, and their beautifully cut hunt coats; but that was as close as the two growing girls would ever get to being able to ride horses.

  And so sweet, warm, vaguely boring summers drifted by, followed by over-long, harsh, brazen winters; until finally Alexandra and Frances left their childhood, and their longings for horses turned to other things; and they started to notice not riders on horses, but elegant ladies stepping in and out of beautiful motor cars, and pretty dresses in magazines which they knew they could never afford, but could at least dream about, while all the time being permanently confined no matter what to their school uniforms, their long grey or white socks, and their felt or panama hats according to the seasons.

  ‘What are you reading?’

  Alexandra tried to hide the book under her eiderdown.

  ‘Give me that!’

  Betty Stamford leaned over the bed and took the offending novel from under the eiderdown. Alexandra found herself blushing as if the book was improper, which she knew very well it could not be. After all, the lady who had lent it to Frances Chisholm was a very smart lady, who rode out twice a week on a beautiful bay mare whom she called Cherrypan.

  ‘What is this, young lady?’

  Alexandra stared at the title that her grandmother was tapping accusingly before she started to flick disapprovingly through the pages.

  ‘It’s a book. It’s going to be a classic, Mrs Chisholm says.’

  ‘She says that, does she? What have I told you, Alexandra? I have told you time and time again you are not to read novels at night, or at any other time for that matter. Novels are full of bad ideas. Girls who read novels end up in hedgerows with their stockings tied round their necks. They bring home trouble, because they’ve read about trouble in just such a book as this. This is going straight back to whoever gave it to you. I’m having none of that sort of nonsense at Lower Bridge Farm, and that is quite certain. We don’t have books in the house unless they’re about farming. Reading novels turns girls into fly-by-nights, and we all know where that leads to – gin lane, that’s where that leads to. You must read nothing but the Bible before you go to sleep. I expect it was that Chisholm girl who loaned it to you. They’re worthless those Chisholms, really they are. Always did live high, wide and handsome before the war, and now they’re down on their luck, letting out liveries and scratching around to find a penny in the straw, all they can think of doing is pulling you down with them.’

  ‘The-the-the lady who lends books to Frances, she owns Cherrypan at the stables,’ Alexandra finished, finally speaking at a gallop, which was her usual way of overcoming the hesitation that had dogged her since she was a toddler.

  ‘If she owns Cherrypan then she’s a snob. I’ve told you time and time again, horses are for snobs. You’re a Stamford. You’re not from a family that keeps horses. We’re a proper farming family, not nose-in-the-air gentry types like those Chisholms. Your grandfather always thought of them as being jumped up, people like the Chisholms. They should keep themselves to themselves as we have always done. From now on you’re not stopping off at tea with them. I don’t want you getting ideas, really I don’t. And nor does your father.’

  She switched off the light, and closed Alexandra’s door a little too noisily behind her.

  Alexandra lay in the dark, tears forming behind her closed eyes. All the time she was growing up she had never thought of the Chisholms as being anything but kind. And she didn’t see how they could possibly be nose-in-the-air types when they were always so friendly to her. She wished, oh how she wished that she was not a Stamford, with only Gran and Father as relatives, especially Father who never spoke to her except when he had to, who passed her in the garden with just a nod, and never took her on picnics as Mr and Mrs Chisholm always did as soon as summer came, giving them chicken with a delicious mayonnaise that Mrs Chisholm took such a pride in making, not to mention her home-made lemonade, and the soft sponge cake that she made with a double filling of cream from the cows and strawberries from the garden.

  As she lay there feeling sorry for herself it seemed to Alexandra that nothing cheerful had ever happened at Lower Bridge Farm, not even when Father won a prize with one of his bulls at the County Show. It was always just the slog, slog, slog of farming life, then church on Sunday, followed by tea, when her grandmother’s friends came and went, and that was that: nothing else to relieve the unvaried pattern of the farming week with its early mornings and early bedtimes gauged to the light outside.

  ‘Rather good,’ was all she remembered Father saying when he had won a prize for his bull, nothing more, and then he had put the cup and the rosette up on the mantelpiece in the dining room, right opposite his bound copies of Farmers’ Fayre.

  ‘And about time too,’ was all Gran had said.

  Alexandra stayed awake, waiting for
her grandmother to go away so that she could put on her light and go on reading the novel, which was exciting and emotional in all sorts of ways.

  The following morning for some reason Alexandra could not fathom, her grandmother seemed to have forgotten all about the wretched novel lent to her by the Chisholms, so that when Alexandra walked out of the house pulling down her hat, her head bent against the east wind, her grandmother did not appear in the least bit interested in the book. As a result of this Alexandra arrived at the top of the drive, all set to wait for Mrs Chisholm’s van to come into view and feeling vaguely as if she had got away with something, although quite what, she could not have said.

  ‘Hop in!’

  Alexandra opened the back door and climbed in beside the inevitable medley of dogs and lead ropes, bailing twine and faded newspapers.

  ‘All aboard the Skylark,’ Mrs Chisholm sang out, and the rest of the children she had picked up replied in kind as the van chugged on to the next pick-up point.

  Back at Lower Bridge Farm the reason for Betty Stamford not paying much attention as to whether or not Alexandra had returned the notorious novel to Frances Chisholm was becoming rapidly clear, if not to Alexandra, at least to her father.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do about it, Mother. It’s just a fact, her mother had a family, Alexandra has relatives. They will be sure to drag us through the courts if we drag our toes any more over this business.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Haimish Dunbar, Mother, that’s who.’

  ‘That Dunbar, he knows nothing, he knows less than nothing. He’s just like his father – useless.’

  ‘He’s been in the habit of looking after our affairs really quite well, Mother, and we have to face it, it’s ten years now, must be ten years, over ten years since Alexandra last visited Knighton Hall. We have to bite on the bullet and let our Alexandra go and visit her Millington relatives, or it will be the worse for us. Can’t honestly see much harm in it myself.’

  ‘Course you can’t, John, course you can’t, you’re a man, aren’t you? Course you can’t see any harm in it. I’ll tell you what harm it will bring, and it’s this. Once over there, we’ll lose her to the Millingtons, sure as eggs is eggs, and that’ll be that, particularly now that she is growing up – nearly grown up, if you happen to have noticed, which I doubt. Your daughter has matured, John, and once girls mature they get funny ideas without any help from us, but we can at least try to make sure they don’t get the wrong funny ideas.’

  John turned away. He still couldn’t see any harm in Alexandra visiting her relatives. More than that, he could only see good. The girl needed to get out from under her grandmother’s skirts, all girls did, he knew that now, not least because a little birdy had told him so.

  ‘My own idea is that she should go and stay with Brother-in-law at the end of term, after Christmas. It’s always a bit of a dull time for her here, on her own, in the New Year, seeing as she’s an only child.’

  ‘She needn’t be an only child, John. If only you would settle down she wouldn’t be on her own, would she now? But you won’t. If only you would, how much better life at Lower Bridge would be.’

  ‘I want to settle down, Mother, you know that. We’ve talked about it, time and time again. But at the moment my life is my life, and that’s all there is to it. I just have to cross my fingers that things will change for me.’

  Betty Stamford’s constant reference to ‘settling down’ was her euphemism for ‘remarrying’, but constant though this theme was in her conversations with John, he never seemed able or willing to respond to her despairing encouragements. He wouldn’t go to any farmers’ dances, nor would he take any notice of young women, pretty young women too some of them, whom she was in the habit of inviting to tea on Sunday afternoons.

  ‘Your father never laughs, does he?’ Frances once said to Alexandra, and Alexandra, knowing this to be true, ran off in the other direction, but when she was alone with Mavis in the kitchen, after the two farm lads had scoffed their tea, she made the same comment to their old cook.

  Mavis had her back turned to her, and she kept it turned, until finally, just as Alexandra thought she might not have heard her, she turned slowly away from the sink and faced Alexandra.

  ‘Your father was that devoted to his Laura, your mother, he’s never laughed since the day she died.’ She paused, a look of reverence on her face as she wiped her hands on her flowered apron. ‘I give it as my opinion, Miss Alexandra, that after she died he imagined that if he allowed hisself to laugh he would cry; and once he started to cry he would never stop. That’s why your father never laughs, and I dare say he never will.’

  ‘She looks pale, I think she might be sickening for something.’

  Betty stood back from Alexandra’s side, but John Stamford shook his head.

  ‘She’s not pale, Mother. She’s just normal. Let her alone, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘How’s she getting to the station, then? You can’t take her, and I can’t drive.’

  John nodded. His mother always mentioned that she couldn’t drive as if it was some kind of virtue.

  ‘Mrs Chisholm’s very kindly said she would take Alexandra to the station and put her on the train for us, Mother.’

  ‘I could do without that Mrs Chisholm. Always interferring in our lives.’

  ‘We can do very little without the kindness of the Chisholms, Mother, most especially since you have always refused to drive.’

  Betty turned away and leaving Alexandra’s bedroom, slammed the door behind her. John looked across at his daughter.

  ‘Time to go, Alexandra,’ he said, half apologetically.

  Alexandra nodded. Over the past few days she’d seen just how upset her grandmother was about Alexandra having to go to stay with her cousins, and just how upset her father was that his mother was so cross, but try as she might she could not help her feelings of bursting excitement. The last time she had been on a train was to visit her Millington cousins, but it was so long ago, she could hardly remember it, only that her father had sent her in the charge of the guard, and so the prospect of going all the way to Knighton Hall on her own was intoxicating.

  ‘Hop in!’

  Mrs Chisholm leaned over and undid her van door.

  ‘Hope you don’t mind, Frances’s in bed with the flu, so she can’t come, and you’re stuck with me.’

  ‘It’s ve-ve-very kind. So-so kind of you to take me to the station, is what I mean.’ She handed over a brown paper parcel. ‘The-the-the book. That’s the book the Cherrypan lady lent me.’

  Mrs Chisholm who, ever mindful of the eccentricities of her van, had kept the engine running all through the proceedings, now crashed gaily through all the gears and the van shot forward.

  ‘You’re a good girl, Alexandra, do you know that?’ Mrs Chisholm yelled over the sound of the engine. ‘I’ve always liked you, and although I know that your grandmother is so against you going to Knighton Hall, I have to say that I think it will do you the world of good. You’re not just a Stamford, you know, Alexandra, your poor dead mother – whom I have to say I only met once but I do remember – she was a Millington through and through, quite different from the Stamfords. For myself, I really think that it is about time you met up with her family again, got to know the other side. I’ve never met them myself, but it is the principle. Your Stamford grandmother can’t keep trying to bar the Millingtons from taking an interest in you, and frankly I think it’s quite ridiculous that she has tried, and what’s more succeeded. Really, she has taken the whole situation right to the wire. Thank heavens that your father has finally seen reason and allowed you some independence, and about time too, I have to say.’

  Alexandra stared at her feet. She knew at once from what Mrs Chisholm was shouting at her above the sound of the engine that the events at Lower Bridge Farm must have been the talk of the neighbourhood, and that everything Mrs Chisholm said was true. She had overheard too many conversations between her grandmother and
Mavis, and between her father and her grandmother, not to realise that she herself had always been the subject of a tug-of-war between her dead mother’s family and her father’s family, although why she was the subject of such a tug-of-war, she had never quite understood. Surely everyone had cousins? Certainly everyone who lived around them seemed to have ever so many relatives, but none of their grandmothers or other relations ever seemed to stop them from visiting each other.

  ‘Well, here we are,’ Mrs Chisholm yelled, keeping the engine not just ticking over, but raging. ‘I can’t put you on the train, but the porter there will help you with your bags. Have a good time, and don’t give a thought to anything else.’

  ‘Than-k you very much, Mrs Chisholm. Than-k you ever so much.’

  Alexandra took her two suitcases from the back of the van and stepped back to allow Mrs Chisholm to circle just as the station porter hurried up to her. He took her cases and, having helped her buy a ticket, led her up to the quite empty station platform to wait for the expected train.

  ‘Come on, Miss Alexandra, got to get you put on the right train, haven’t we? Mrs Stamford warned me to put you in the Ladies Only carriage, most especially she did. My life won’t be worth living if I don’t do as she says.’

  Her father had not said anything about her travel arrangements. He had simply handed her what seemed a great deal of money and told her not to spend it all at once. Perhaps because of this Alexandra suddenly felt quite alone. To hide her vague feelings of trepidation she pushed her Alice band higher up her head, and smiled at Bob the station porter as brilliantly as she could. Bob’s dog had won first prize for looking most like his owner at the Hunt Dog Show, but now that Alexandra stared up into Bob’s large brown eyes, it seemed to her that it should have been the other way round.