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BOOK I
One
I
Warmsley Heath consists of a golf course, two hotels, some very expensive modern villas giving
on to the golf course, a row of what were, before the war, luxury shops, and a railway station.
Emerging from the railway station, a main road roars its way to London on your left—to your
right a small path across a field is signposted
Footpath to Warmsley Vale.
Warmsley Vale, tucked away amongst wooded hills, is as unlike Warmsley Heath as well can
be. It is in essence a microscopic old-fashioned market town now degenerated into a village. It has
a main street of Georgian houses, several pubs, a few unfashionable shops and a general air of
being a hundred and fifty instead of twenty-eight miles from London.
Its occupants one and all unite in despising the mushroom growth of Warmsley Heath.
On the outskirts are some charming houses with pleasant old-world gardens. It was to one of
these houses, the White House, that Lynn Marchmont returned in the early spring of 1946 when
she was demobbed from the Wrens.
On her third morning she looked out of her bedroom window, across the untidy lawn to the
elms in the meadow beyond, and sniffed the air happily. It was a gentle grey morning with a smell
of soft wet earth. The kind of smell that she had been missing for the past two years and a half.
Wonderful to be home again, wonderful to be here in her own little bedroom which she had
thought of so often and so nostalgically whilst she had been overseas. Wonderful to be out of
uniform, to be able to get into a tweed skirt and a jumper—even if the moths had been rather too
industrious during the war years!
It was good to be out of the Wrens and a free woman again, although she had really enjoyed her
overseas service very much. The work had been reasonably interesting, there had been parties,
plenty of fun, but there had also been the irksomeness of routine and the feeling of being herded
together with her companions which had sometimes made her feel desperately anxious to escape.
It was then, during the long scorching summer out East, that she had thought so longingly of
Warmsley Vale and the shabby cool pleasant house, and of dear Mums.
Lynn both loved her mother and was irritated by her. Far away from home, she had loved her
still and had forgotten the irritation, or remembered it only with an additional homesick pang.
Darling Mums, so completely maddening! What she would not have given to have heard Mums
enunciate one cliché in her sweet complaining voice. Oh, to be at home again and never, never to
have to leave home again!
And now here she was, out of the service, free, and back at the White House. She had been back
three days. And already a curious dissatisfied restlessness was creeping over her. It was all the
same—almost too much all the same—the house and Mums and Rowley and the farm and the
family. The thing that was different and that ought not to be different was herself….
“Darling…” Mrs. Marchmont’s thin cry came up the stairs. “Shall I bring my girl a nice
tray in bed?”
Lynn called out sharply:
“Of course not. I’m coming down.”
“And why,” she thought, “has Mums got to say ‘my girl.’ It’s so silly!”
She ran downstairs and entered the dining room. It was not a very good breakfast. Already Lynn
was realizing the undue proportion of time and interest taken by the search for food. Except for a
rather unreliable woman who came four mornings a week, Mrs. Marchmont was alone in the
house, struggling with cooking and cleaning. She had been nearly forty when Lynn was born and
her health was not good. Also Lynn realized with some dismay how their financial position had
changed. The small but adequate fixed income which had kept them going comfortably before the
war was now almost halved by taxation. Rates, expenses, wages had all gone up.
“Oh! brave new world,” thought Lynn grimly. Her eyes rested lightly on the columns of the
daily paper.
“Ex-W.A.A.F. seeks post where initiative and drive will be appreciated.”
“Former W.R.E.N. seeks post where organizing ability and authority are
needed.”
Enterprise, initiative, command, those were the commodities offered. But what was wanted?
People who could cook and clean, or write decent shorthand. Plodding people who knew a routine
and could give good service.
Well, it didn’t affect her. Her way ahead lay clear. Marriage to her cousin Rowley Cloade.
They had got engaged seven years ago, just before the outbreak of war. Almost as long as she
could remember, she had meant to marry Rowley. His choice of a farming life had been
acquiesced in readily by her. A good life—not exciting perhaps, and with plenty of hard work, but
they both loved the open air and the care of animals.
Not that their prospects were quite what they had been—Uncle Gordon had always promised….
Mrs. Marchmont’s voice broke in plaintively apposite:
“It’s been the most dreadful blow to us all, Lynn darling, as I wrote you. Gordon had only
been in England two days. We hadn’t even seen him. If only he hadn’t stayed in London. If
he’d come straight down here.”
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