When the Bough Breaks

  Table of Contents

  Further Titles by Connie Monk

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1919–1933

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  1939–1945

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  1954

  Chapter Ten

  Further Titles by Connie Monk

  SEASON OF CHANGE

  FORTUNE’S DAUGHTER

  JESSICA

  HANNAH’S WHARF

  RACHEL’S WAY

  REACH FOR THE DREAM

  TOMORROW’S MEMORIES

  A FIELD OF BRIGHT LAUGHTER

  FLAME OF COURAGE

  THE APPLE ORCHARDS

  BEYOND DOWNING WOOD

  THE RUNNING TIDE

  FAMILY REUNIONS

  ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM

  WATER’S EDGE

  DIFFERENT LIVES

  THE SANDS OF TIME

  SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

  FROM THIS DAY FORWARD

  ECHO OF TRUTH

  MISTRESS OF MANNINGTOR

  FAST FLOWS THE STREAM

  THE LONG ROAD HOME

  TO LIGHT A CANDLE

  A SECOND SPRING

  HUNTERS’ LODGE *

  A PROMISE FULFILLED *

  BEYOND THE SHORE *

  WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS *

  * available from Severn House

  WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS

  Connie Monk

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2011

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2011 by Connie Monk.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Monk, Connie.

  When the Bough Breaks.

  1. World War, 1939-1945–Social aspects–Great Britain–

  Fiction. 2. Women gardeners–Fiction. 3. Great Britain–

  History–George VI, 1936-1952–Fiction.

  I. Title

  823.9'14-dc22

  ISBN-13: 978-1-7801-0335-8 (Epub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8017-8 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-339-7 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  1919–1933

  One

  Dennis Hawthorne wasn’t a man to let his spirits be cast down easily, but as he closed the door of that dingy office and came into the bright sunshine his future held no ray of hope. This wasn’t the dream that had kept him going through those hellish years of the war. Yet he ought to be thankful – he was thankful. Thousands of men who had lost their lives in the stinking trenches would jump at the offer he’d just turned down. But he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, waste the glories of the life that had been spared to him in that miserable, gloomy shed that called itself an office. Look across the harbour to the open sea, listen to the cries of the gulls as they circled an incoming fishing boat . . . Then without warning the scene before him seemed to be wiped out by the vision that haunted him and, even now, more than a year since it had happened, all too often dragged him out of sleep to find himself trembling, sweating, sometimes crying like a child. There by the harbour, the May morning was overtaken by the scene of his nightmare. He was shivering despite the palms of his hands being clammy; he felt the sweat break on his brow. He was climbing out of the trench, charging into no-man’s-land, then the sound of the explosion seemed to be bursting in his head and he saw Ted Turner blown to pieces only yards from him. Ted Turner who had been his friend since they started infant school on the same day. Now instinctively he raised his shaking hand and wiped his forehead, making a supreme effort to appear normal, standing there amongst the dock workers.

  ‘You all right, son?’ a kindly voice asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Just so bright coming out from that dark shed.’

  ‘Ah, give me the fresh air, no matter what the weather chucks at you. Been in there to see the old man about the job, have you?’

  Dennis looked at the stranger with the kindly voice, a man more than twice his age. ‘You work for him?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah, I work here on the dock, loading. I saw the notice in the paper for a bookkeeper. Did you get taken on?’

  ‘I turned it down. I did right, I know I did. But God knows how long before I find anything. Couldn’t do it though, couldn’t be stuck in that dark hovel.’

  ‘You home from the army I s’pose. A land fit for heroes, that’s what you boys were promised. Tell you one thing, though, lad. Nothing in this world is ever what you dream it will be; but there’s usually something good to be found if we look for it – a mate to work alongside, someone to have a joke with. You’ll find the right thing, mayhap it’s just around the next corner, eh?’

  Dennis’s bad moment had passed and with the stranger’s optimistic comment echoing in his mind, he started up Quay Hill to catch the bus back to Exeter where he rented a bed-sitting room. Yes, he’d done right to refuse. He was still free and like that chap had said, something good might be just around the next corner. Reality caught up with him when he joined the end of the queue waiting at the bus stop, for nearby was a man no more than his own twenty-one years, a man propped up on crutches with one empty trouser leg pinned up, and attached to a cord around his neck was a tray with boxes of matches. Dennis dug in his pocket for a penny and bought a box just as the Exeter bus drew up.

  Two women laden with shopping baskets got on first, then with a smile and, ‘Good luck, mate’, to the match seller, he followed.

  The bus was taking a long country route back to Exeter. It was only about midday and the thought of his bed-sitting room held no appeal. What was there to hurry for? When a couple of women got up to disembark in a village, he followed them, his nose immediately being assailed by the smell of fish and chips. So it was that with his lunch wrapped in a greasy newspaper package he turned from the village street in what he was to come to know as Sedgewood and started to walk down a narrow lane, which was signed: To the Common.

  About a quarter of a mile on he came face to face with his future. No longer was it shrouded in impenetrable mist. On a garden gate was a faded sign: COTTAGE AND ABOUT FIVE ACRES TO LET. The cottage stood empty, looking unloved and desolate with its painted name, Westways, so faded it was barely readable. But it wasn’t the cottage that set his imagination racing, it was the land; five acres as sadly neglected as the building itself. It was like stumbling upon something held in a time warp. This was his future: Dennis had never felt as certain of anything. Pushing open the gate that hung on one hinge he walked up the weed-choked path and pressed his nose to the windows of the house. He battled his way through t
he overgrown land, imagining the hours he would spend restoring it. Hours? Weeks, months, he corrected himself. He remembered how he used to love to work with his grandfather on his vegetable plot and, casting a glance to the pale winter sky, wanted to believe that his decision was gaining approval.

  There was no time to loose. He jotted down the name of the agent and caught the next bus back to Deremouth. By the end of the day his future had a shape: he would breathe new life into these five acres of south Devon countryside and make the house a home. Long ago someone else must have lived there, tilling the land, caring for the property, and that’s how it would be again.

  That was in May. He became the tenant on the first of June, and before that he had to attend an auction sale in Exeter and bid for the bare essentials of furniture. He took note of every penny he spent, for he had little enough to live on and he knew it would be some time before the land could bring him any income. But there were things he had to have: gardening tools (all bought second-hand) and his one extravagance, a motorized digger. But he had plenty of clearing to do before he could hope to use that.

  That summer he worked outside seven days a week from first light until dusk. His scheme was to clear and plant out one patch at a time. That way by the time the winter crops came along he ought to be making some sort of a living. He found time to go to the village, to make friends with the shopkeepers and get the greengrocer’s word that he would be prepared to take his crop assuming that it was of high enough quality.

  During the winter evenings he distempered the inside walls. A stranger seeing it would have thought his home a barren and cheerless place, but to Dennis it was an object of pride. The rooms were small, a kitchen-cum-sitting room, a ‘parlour’ or dining room, then upstairs two bedrooms. Outside on the back wall of the cottage he kept a zinc bath, which he had to bring indoors and fill with water heated in buckets on the range. A few yards from the cottage was an earth closet. After his years in the trenches, to Dennis it all seemed like luxury and, in the beginning, even the solitude was balm to his spirit. Surely if anything could dispel the memories that tormented him it must be the work he did on the land.

  For the first two years he worked alone; paying a helper’s wage was out of the question. Bit by bit the ground was cleared, the earth turned with his motor digger and then planted. So often he sent up a silent thank you to his grandfather who had died during the war years and had left to Dennis what little money he had. Living frugally he survived, learnt to look after himself and gradually to eke out a living from his land.

  It was in the summer of 1922 that something happened to change his future. Each day he delivered his boxes of vegetable to Jack Hopkins, the village greengrocer, in a handcart. With the delivery made he was just pushing his cart back along the track towards Westways when he saw a girl trying to put the chain back on her bicycle. Sometimes people from the village walked this way, taking the track that led to the common. But he’d never seen this girl before. She probably wasn’t local, he decided, for from her attire he imagined she had been on a long cycle ride. Wearing grey flannel pleated shorts and a white short-sleeved shirt she might have been no more than a schoolgirl – or that was his impression until he came nearer.

  ‘Do you need a hand?’ he called as he approached her.

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with it today. Three times the chain has come off. It’s never done it before. I think I’ve got it on and half a mile along the road it’s slipped again.’

  ‘Perhaps something needs tightening. Have you a tool bag?’

  ‘No – just two hands. And oily ones at that,’ she answered cheerfully.

  She had turned the bike upside down and had been crouching by its side to fix it. Now she stood up and he saw immediately that he’d been wrong in thinking her a schoolgirl. She was a young woman, and an attractive young woman too. At a quick glance he took her in from head to toe. His first thought was that her hair reminded him of autumn and conkers; to say it was brown made it sound ordinary but it wasn’t really auburn. She was very slim, yet he was aware of her breasts under the thin cotton of her open neck blouse. Her long slender legs were bare and on her feet she wore a pair of strapped sandals little different from those of a child. Yet she certainly wasn’t a child; if she were, her long hair would have been in a pigtail instead of being swept up and pinned to the top of her head. And her face? If he thought of the picture stars of the day who were considered beautiful, then she was no beauty for there was nothing ‘rosebud’ about her mouth. Her cheekbones were pronounced and her nose tip-tilted. Yet her wide dark eyes were like no eyes he had ever seen.

  Aware that she’d seen how he was staring at her he felt raw and gauche. ‘If you like, I’ll take a look at it for you.’ Once more he was in control. ‘I live just along there in that cottage.’ Then, unable to keep the pride out of his voice, he added, ‘This field here, well, I say field but it’s a market garden really, it’s mine. I’ve just been out delivering the veg to the shop in the village.’

  ‘You grow all that?’ She spoke in awed admiration just as he’d hoped she would. ‘Do you reckon you can fix it so that I can get back to Exeter? I’d be awfully grateful.’

  He liked her more and more. Some girls would have looked on him with suspicion because he suggested she should go home with him. But not this one. She had bags of common sense; he knew it immediately. As she bent to up-end her bike, he picked it up and laid it on his cart.

  ‘I’ve been cycling all day,’ she told him as they started along the lane, speaking as if she’d known him for years. ‘It was really exciting, all of it new to me. I’ve only been in Exeter for a fortnight and my day off last week was wet.’

  ‘You’ve taken a job in Exeter? What do you do?’

  ‘A sort of general bit of this and bit of that. When I left school I was needed at home so I’ve never trained for anything. All I really know is looking after a house and cooking – that sort of thing. I work for an elderly couple, brother and sister. Dear old things they are. They have a housekeeper, so you could call me a housemaid except that I do other things. Sometimes I read to the old dears. Neither of them can see well enough to read for themselves and they like to keep abreast with the daily news. I like doing that, because that way I get to read the paper too. I do the mending and the ironing, I go out shopping. Yesterday I made twelve pots of jam. Like I say, I just do whatever comes along. Not being trained for anything, really, I was lucky to get taken on.’

  ‘I reckon they’re the lucky ones having you there to look after them. So where have you been today?’

  ‘I didn’t have a map so it’s hard to say. One place I went to was called Otterton St Giles – that was about the furthest I suppose. That’s where I ate my sandwiches. Then to a bigger place, Deremouth, this side of the estuary. When it was time to start for home I followed a sign that said Exeter but got sidetracked at the end of the lane here when I read this was the way ‘To the Common’. I shouldn’t have attempted it, not with all these ruts in the track. I expect that’s what got my chain off again. It was fine all the way from that Deremouth place.’

  ‘We’ll soon get it fixed. Here we are, in you go.’ He held the gate open for her then followed her with the cart. ‘Do you want to wait in the house while I see what I can do? My toolbox is in the shed over there.’

  ‘I’d rather come and watch you, just in case I have trouble another time – unless your wife or your mother or someone is in there and will think it rude of me.’

  ‘I have neither wife nor mother. I live on my own.’ Then with a ring of pride, he added, ‘And I work on my own too, can’t afford any help yet. But it’s all coming along really well. When I’ve done the bike I’ll show you what I grow if you like.’

  She nodded, her wide mouth beaming with pleasure. ‘I’d like that.’

  It was more than an hour later that he walked with her to the end of the lane and saw her on her way. He’d wanted to ask her to come to Sedgewood again next time she had
a day off and it didn’t rain, but he was frightened to suggest it in case she refused. So all he said was, ‘I work here on my own all the time. If you’re ever this way drop in and say hello.’

  ‘May I? I don’t want to be a nuisance when you’ve got masses to do. Or perhaps you could give me some jobs. Remember I’m good at doing a bit of this and a bit of that.’

  ‘Come soon, won’t you.’ The words were out before he could stop them.

  ‘Just try and stop me! By the way, what’s your name? I’m Kathie Barnes.’

  ‘And I’m Dennis Hawthorne. Just Den does me.’

  ‘Bye then, Den. If it’s not chucking it down on us next week I’ll ride over. But you must promise you’ll tell me if you’re too busy. I won’t mind, honestly.’

  He promised. But secretly they both knew that the days between then and her next free time were simply hours to be lived through.

  Until the day he had chanced on Kathie, his own company had been all he’d wanted. His three years at Westways had calmed his shattered nerves, even dimmed some of the memories that would never be erased; solitude had become a habit and he was never lonely. Then meeting Kathie changed everything.

  The following week he took her into the cottage, giving her the Grand Tour of the sparsely furnished rooms with their distempered walls. He even pointed out the zinc bath and the outside closet, not as features to be despised but as an accepted part of the ambience. And viewing it all, her eyes shone with admiration; there he was, a young, strong, good-looking man, thoroughly self-reliant.

  As the weeks went by, each time she had her day off she cycled from the house near Exeter to Sedgewood. It would have taken more than rain to deter her, in fact she liked wet days when instead of working on the land they were in the cottage. She cooked their lunch – making sure she did enough that he had something he could warm up for supper or for the next day. For both of them, her visits were the highlight of their week. He knew so little about girls. Being with her made him aware of what a loner he had become. Most of his army compatriots had gone home to wives or girlfriends, but he’d had neither. If he’d had a sedentary job (like the one in that dingy shed by the harbour) he would have looked for female company in the evenings. Most nights when he went to bed he was too tired to miss the thing that was lacking in his life. Yet he was a normal, healthy young man and often enough his sleep would be disturbed by something he couldn’t control. Knowing nothing of the realities of shared love making, even his fantasies lacked direction. All that changed when Kathie came into his life. He would find himself watching her as she reached to pick the first of the runner beans, aware that on these warm summer days she wore nothing under her cotton blouse and imagining how her small breasts would feel if only he could hold them in the palms of his hands. Then his hand might move down her flat stomach, force its way between her slender thighs, he would . . .