During the first days of her bereavement, the hideous irony of his dying had given her a passionate dislike for Tower Cottage. The only reason Peter had been in that pub at that critical moment was to phone her the good news that he'd signed the mortgage contract for a house that would take them away from the increasingly dangerous city streets: a house in the gray-stoned hills of Dorset, with its own orchard and gardens, and a paddock for a pony; the kind of rural, self-sufficient life that Amy and he had known as children.
Her parents, and his, had urged her to repudiate the contract, to stay close to them so they could give her the comfort, protection, and aid that a young widow with four growing children would undeniably need.
Stubbornly and contrary to her prejudice toward Tower Cottage, Amy Landon had honored that agreement, citing to her parents that the life-insurance policy required by the mortgage company now gave her the house free and clear.
"You could say that Peter died to secure Tower Cottage," Amy had told the parental conclave. "It is far away from London and I want to get far away from London. I want to abide by the plans my Peter and I made. I'm well able for the life. It isn't as if I weren't country-bred… Just because you wanted to retire to the city…"
"But, all alone… so far from a village… and neighbors," her father and Peter's had argued.
"I'm hardly alone with four children. Young Peter's as tall as I and much stronger. We're scarcely far from a village when there're shops, a post office, and a pub a half mile down the lane. As for neighbors… I'll have too much to do to worry about neighbors."
And the fewer the better, she'd amended to herself. She abhorred the pity, even the compassion, accorded her for her loss. She was weary of publicity, of people staring blur-eyed at herself and her children. They'd all be spoiled if this social sympathy continued much longer: spoiled into thinking that the world owed them something because politics… or was it madness?… had deprived them of their father.
"My mother keeps a special box," Sally Merrion was saying to draw Amy's thought back to the present, to the low-beam kitchen redolent of bubbling bramble berries, sealing wax, and the casserole baking in the old Aga cooker. "It's got clothes my grandma and great-gran wore."
Amy wondered if she'd ever use those maxiskirts again. "I've some things in the blanket chest…" She hesitated. She couldn't leave the jelly half-poured and she resisted the notion, once again, that there was something about the box room that made her loathe to enter it.
"Don't worry, Mother. I wouldn't touch anything good," Fran said, patently relieved that her mother had risen to the need. "And you daren't leave the jelly."
"Wadies-in-waiting?" asked Marjorie in a quavering voice.
"Yes, yes, love. Go along then, girls. I really must finish the jelly. Fran, you can use those long skirts of mine. And there're old sheets in the blanket chest…" Why on earth be afraid of a blanket chest? But a frisson caught her between her shoulders. 'They'd make lovely flowing robes…"
From the scornful expression on Sally's face, Amy wondered what on earth the child was permitted to use in her own home. Cheeky girl.
Amy concentrated on the jelly, finishing the first pan of jars and getting the next ready before her maternal instinct flared. Back in the kitchen, separated from the main section of the cottage by the pantry, and thick walls, she could hear nothing. She'd better check. She pushed open the pantry door and the high happy voices of the girls, affecting adult accents, carried quite audibly down the stairwell. They were obviously playing there on the landing in front of the box room. Satisfied, Amy returned to her jelly.
She found unexpected satisfaction, she mused, in these homely preparations against the winter. Atavistic, Peter would have called her. The summer had not been kind to the land and its bounty was reduced, or so the villagers said, but Amy Landon had no fault to find. The apple and pear trees of Tower Cottage were well laden when you considered that there'd been no one to prune, spray, or fertilize them: and how there came to be beetroot, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, and swedes in the kitchen garden, Amy didn't know. The villagers had rolled their eyes and each suggested someone else as the Good Samaritan. Her circumstances were known in the village, so she concluded that some kindhearted soul did not wish her to feel under obligation. Nonetheless, the abundance of the garden meant that she could manage better on the Spartan budget she allowed herself. (She would make no unnecessary inroads on savings that were earmarked to see young Peter through secondary school and college. And she refused to think in terms of compensation money.) With the cost of all commodities rising, she must grow or raise as much as possible on her property.
Mr. Suttle, who ran the tiny shop at the crossroads, had told her that old Mrs. Mallett had kept chickens: she had owned Tower Cottage before the Alderdyces bought it. (The Alderdyces, now, they hadn't lived there very long: come into money sudden like, and bought a grand house nearer London only they didn't get to live in their new house because they died of a motor accident before ever they reached it.) While Mr. Suttle hadn't heard of chickens living wild like that for two years or more, then returning to their own run, there was no other explanation for the flock that now pecked contentedly around the barn behind Tower Cottage, and obediently laid their eggs for Patricia to find.
To her father's amusement, and young Peter's delight, Amy had purchased a Guernsey cow, for what was the sense of having a four-acre meadow and a barn unexpectedly full of hay if one didn't use them. Mr. Suttle had knowledgeably inspected the same stable and hay, pronounced the one fit to house cattle and the other well enough saved to be eaten by the cow, and applauded little Mrs. Landon's sense.
Old Mrs. Mallett, who'd been spry to the day of her peaceful death, had kept chickens, cow, and pig (Mr. Suttle thought he might be able to find Mrs. Landon a piglet to fatten for Christmas) and lived quite well off her land, and kept warm and comfortable in Tower Cottage.
Amy assured Mr. Suttle that this was also her intention, and she thanked him for his advice, but she rather felt the piglet could wait until she was accustomed to managing cow, chickens, and children.
Actually, it was young Peter who managed the cow, after instructions from the farmer who'd sold them the beast. And Patricia, Peter's twin, cared for the chickens. The two vied with each other to prove their charges in that curiously intense competition reserved to twins.
Amy sealed the bramble jelly and began to stick on the labels that Fran had laboriously printed for her. All of them had picked the berries the day before, a warm, sunny Sunday, and made a game of the work, arriving home in the early September dusk, berry-full and berry-stained, with buckets of the rich dark fruit. The only deterrent to complete happiness for Amy had been the absence of her husband: this was what he had wanted for his family and he wasn't alive to share it. In poignant moments like this, her longing for him became a physical illness.
She must continue to force such negative thoughts from her mind: the children had had enough gloom, enough insecurity. She must find contentment in the fact that they were indeed living as Peter had so earnestly desired.
Young Peter came in with the milk pail, the contents frothy and warm. Patricia was just behind him with eggs from her hens.
"I think Molly likes me," Peter announced as he usually did when the Guernsey had let down her milk for him with no fuss.
"Another dozen eggs, Mummie," said Patricia, taking her basket into the larder and carefully arranging the freshest in the front of the molded cardboard. Peter heaved the bucket up to the counter and got out the big kettle, whereupon he began to measure the milk before heating it. He was keeping a record of Molly's output as against her intake, so that they would have accurate figures on how much their milk and butter were costing them. He was all for trying to make soft cheese, too, since there were herbs along the garden path for seasoning.