The Others of Edenwell by Verity M. Holloway

Author:Verity M. Holloway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan Books

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The housewives of Thetford donated what measly spare sugar and flour they had to the Edenwell kitchens. Whatever therapeutic treatments the men would receive at the Hydropathic, it was agreed that currant buns would speed along the healing process. After pushing Lottie Mulgrave’s piano up to the North Wing, Eustace and Freddie had been seized by Missus Hardy to take the gleaming silver tea urn and the rest of the victuals. They waited in the kitchen’s stone doorway, politely pretending not to hear the cook’s grousing as Maud piled fist-sized buns onto a plate.

“If those ruddy nurses think I’m chasing after them, they’ve got another think coming,” Missus Hardy said, scrubbing a pan as if it had done her personal harm. “The lip on those women. Never in all my years—”

Maud wiped her hands on her apron, a grin on her face. “I don’t mind taking the tea up, Missus Hardy.”

“You’re having a laugh. Two minutes alone with all those scallies and you and Annie’ll both be in the family way.”

At that moment, Tabitha came struggling in with a tray heaped with dishes. Catching the end of their conversation, her face turned an unlovely shade of red.

Laden with rattling cups and a great steel urn of tea, Freddie and Eustace wheeled the trolley to the lift and waited for it to come ticking down. Freddie breathed in the smell of fresh baking. “Do you think they’d notice if I walked in with crumbs around my mouth?”

“Take one.”

“They can probably shoot you for that,” he grinned. “Stealing from the army.”

Eustace broke a piece off a bun speckled with currants and put it to Freddie’s lips. “Can’t have my lieutenant going hungry.”

Lottie Mulgrave had been a beauty in her day. She never married – not for want of offers – preferring to court her audience with a boldness bordering on indecency. At fifty-five she had lost very little of her looks and none of her zest, tossing her head so her thick braids flew out like golden bullwhips as she struck up a marching beat on the piano.

“I long ago gave up searching for the right man,” she said. “I’d rather have a wrong’un. And I have the pick of them tonight, haven’t I, lads?”

Pausing with the trolley at the North Wing doors, Eustace shot Freddie an excited glance. The soldiers gathered on their new beds, in easy chairs and on windowsills, more interested in their Woodbines than anything else. The men sat in three clear camps: the ones with no interest in being there, a few who weren’t sure where they were, and the majority, so relieved to be safe they wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise their luck. A round of polite applause followed each ditty, and a few weak laughs. Lottie had avoided war songs, sticking instead to the safer music hall favourites. “Not so much as a whisper of Ivor Novello,” she had promised as Freddie shunted the piano into place for her. She was convinced that if the nurses would just let the men get a little drunk, they’d make an easy crowd.

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