“Now,” she said, “we’ve got nearly an hour in which we can chat. The children won’t be back from school until four o’clock.”
“Thank goodness for that!” Mona exclaimed. “It’s easier to see the King of England than to see you alone these days.”
“I know,” Dorothy answered with a grimace, “but I can’t help it. What with my own four and three evacuees, I’m pretty busy. I’ve only got a girl of fifteen to help me and she’s almost as bad as having another child, although she tries her best.”
“And then there’s the W.V.S. Oh, Mona, what am I to do about Mavis Gunther?”
“What’s happened?” Mona asked.
“To use a current phrase, she’s ‘sabotaging’ everything,” Dorothy answered. “What’s upset me now is that she’s taken away two of my very best women, the two on whom I can rely to help, not only with the knitting, but the jam-making and all the dozen and one things that we are supposed to do.”
“How?”
“Sheer blackmail. If it wasn’t so annoying it would be funny. One of them, you remember Mrs. Watson, the fat old lady who lives down Elmtree Lane?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, she’s got a child who’s rather delicate but quite extraordinarily clever. She adores that child and she is frightfully keen for her to win the Sunday School prize. Well, it has been intimated to Mrs. Watson, very tactfully of course, that unless she works for the knitting party and gives up the W.V.S., little Vera won’t get the prize.”
“But it’s unbelievable!” Mona exclaimed. “Mavis Gunther must be out of her mind.”
“On the contrary, she’s very much in it.”
“And the other woman?”
“Mrs. Young – I don’t think you know her. A very nice woman in every way but she’s got a rotten husband who drinks and can’t keep a job. They’ve been on parish relief for some time, the children would starve otherwise. Well, unless she does what is wanted, the Vicar is likely to give her a report, which will alter the relief benefit.”
“Really,” Mona exclaimed, “it’s medieval. We ought to be able to do something about it.”
“But what?” Dorothy asked. “You see the village people look at things sanely. They know that, whatever happens, Arthur will do his best for them, and I would never do my worst, so, ‘knowing which side their bread is buttered’, or whatever the expression is, they play up to her.”
“And who can blame them?”
“I’m sure I don’t,” Dorothy agreed, “but really, Mona, if I could commit murder and get away with it, I would. The person I’m sorry for is that wretched man, Stanley Gunther, my heart bleeds for him. Just think of being cooped-up with that fiend day in and day out!”
“Is she still awful to him?” Mona asked. “I remember some of her tricks in the old days.”
“If possible, she’s worse,” Dorothy replied. “She nags him in public, she’s spiteful, cruel, and beastly, and like a snake waiting to strike, she wounds him when he’s not expecting it. She hardly bothers to hide her pleasure when she can make him look a fool in front of the village, or humiliate him before his friends.”
“Murder’s too good for her!” Mona said. “It’s funny, Dorothy, but I suppose people are the same all the world over. I’ve known other women like Mavis Gunther in a very different stratum of society, but the instinct to be cruel, to torture others and to grasp power by whatever means they could, was exactly the same.”
“I suppose power is what she does want,” Dorothy said. “That’s why she hates me. You see, Lady Beaumont, the Lord-Lieutenant’s wife, asked me to start the W.V.S. here. If I’d had any sense I suppose I’d have refused, but I felt it was my duty. There’s so little I can do here to help the war.”
“Little!” Mona exclaimed. “I should think you’re doing a great deal more than most people, certainly more than anyone in Little Cobble.”
“Well, that isn’t saying much,” Dorothy replied. “They don’t know there’s a war on here. Do you know what was said at the knitting party last week? As a matter of fact, your mother told me. Someone, one of the women, suggested they might knit for the Air Force, and Mavis Gunther replied. ‘Why should we? There are no Little Cobble men in the R.A.F.’”
“One would expect such a remark from her,” Mona said.
“But tell me about yourself. I want to forget Little Cobble and all its petty worries, troubles and squabbles. Tell me what you’ve been doing all these years. I’ve thought about you being carefree and lovely in all the happiest and loveliest places in the world.”
“I suppose that’s what it sounds like to those at home,” Mona sighed. “Actually, like everything else in life, it was rather disappointing when one was there. The light-heartedness rang a bit hollow at times and the beauty spots were either scattered with orange-peel, or spoilt by the crowds.”
“Nonsense!” Dorothy said emphatically. “You can’t put me off with stories like that. When it rained here, I used to pad through the mud in my old mackintosh thinking to myself, ‘I expect Mona’s lying on a golden beach waiting to run into an emerald sea, I expect Mona’s watching polo in a thin chiffon dress and a shady hat with a crowd of young men waiting to bring her an iced drink if she should want one.’”
“It sounds like a musical comedy,” Mona laughed.
“But haven’t you learnt by this time that’s how your life appears to us? Perhaps ‘comedy’ is the wrong word. ‘Background by Hollywood’ is better and it’s brought glamour and a reflected excitement into our drab lives just to have known you.”
“How ridiculous you are!” Mona exclaimed. “But even in chiffon dresses and shady hats one’s heart can break and one can feel very like tears.”
She had meant to speak lightly but her voice broke on the words. Quietly Dorothy put out her hand and laid it on Mona’s.
“I’m sorry, dear. I thought somehow it sounded all too good to be true.”
Mona blinked away the tears that rose to her eyes.
“I don’t want to talk about it Dot, in fact I can’t. But it hasn’t always been fun, at times it’s been damnable. And now I am home.”
Dorothy gave her hand a quick squeeze.
“Our gain,” she said briefly. “I’m going to be selfish and hope you stay here.”
“I expect to forever,” Mona answered.
She spoke tragically but Dorothy ignored her tone of voice.
“I’m going to get you a cup of tea – the doctor’s remedy for every ill,” she said. “You’d like one, wouldn’t you?”
