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Andrews UK - Sullatober Dalton

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137 pages

English

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No one would object to a rest home for soldiers where they could re-establish family relationships - or could they? In order to realise his dream for rehabilitaion, Colonel Cunninghame must get his ducks in a row for the Planning Committee and not count his chickens. He'll also have to accommodate Mrs Bonifacce's poets and painters - Oakhaven wouldn't be Oakhaven without her. Unfortunately, foxes like ducks and chickens run riot now and then. On top of that, there was a bomb and a ruin that Mrs Elaine Jackson insisted on having renovated before she would marry him.

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Humour

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Publié par	Andrews UK
Date de parution	27 mai 2015
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785382031
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0150€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Title Page
THE COLONEL’S DUCKS AT OAKHAVEN
Sullatober Dalton

Publisher Information
Published in 2015 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
The right of Sullatober Dalton to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998
Copyright © 2015 Sullatober Dalton
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Dedication
This book is dedicated to my cousins Mary and Marie whose encouragement has been a great help

Chapter 1
In deference to the beautiful June afternoon, widowed Elaine Jackson, looking slim and cool in a yellow dress, and retired colonel, Gordon Cunninghame, in shirt and tie and flannels, as near as he came to casual clothes, sat in the shade of the portico of the Manor House enjoying each other’s company. They should have been relaxing in cane chairs with regency cushions to add to their comfort, eating delicately cool cucumber sandwiches and taking their tea in fine china, instead, they were sitting in plastic outdoor furniture that rocked every time they moved, sipping the brew the local convenience store sold from thick mugs. From where they sat, they looked over what had once been a lawn, a rose garden and thick borders of flowers in a garden surrounded by a driveway round which carriages had, in a bygone age, carried the country gentlefolk on their visits to the Manor House. In place of the lawn and its roses there was a great swathe of weeds and wilderness, which Elaine, in deference to the odd wild flower or struggling foxglove or gladiola, had raised to the status of a meadow when she mentioned it to one of her suburban telephone friends.
‘Have you thought any more about moving here, Elaine?’ Gordon asked. ‘After Cape Town, I was hoping...you know.’
Elaine looked away. ‘It’s just...it’s just...our time in Cape Town was wonderful, Gordon, but now we’re back to reality and it just seems to have been a kind of holiday romance.’ She turned back to Gordon and went on, ‘I’m sorry, I’m very fond of you, but that’s how it feels.’
‘What I’m sorry about, Elaine, is that you don’t share what I’m feeling. Even if you leave, after what I went through when Maureen was killed in Belfast, I know I’ll get over it eventually, but right now, I feel all the nervousness and hope and delight of being in love again and I want to share it with you.’
Elaine smiled. ‘I suppose, in a way, I still miss George. It’s almost four years since he died. I don’t think of him when I’m with you, but maybe his memory is still hanging in the background. All I know is that, having been released from all my friends trying to match make for me and having to live by rules they make, I want to feel free. Not free to run riot but free to enjoy the flowers and listen to the birds and to walk in the country and take my time about making decisions.’
Gordon smiled and patted her hand.
For a while, they sat quiet, looking out over the ‘meadow’, following the flight of the odd bird and enjoying the peace.
It was Elaine who broke the silence. She wiped a hand over her lap, brushing off imaginary crumbs, before turning to Gordon. ‘Do you think the National Trust will raise any objections to what you want to do?’ she asked him.
Gordon, slouched and relaxed, remembered his military posture, sat up straight and frowned. ‘I don’t really know, Elaine, this is my first encounter with people who look after old buildings, but I’m not proposing any great changes. The Manor House will still be as it is, I don’t want to do anything but clean up the stables and do repairs. The garden needs to be cleaned and replanted, anyway, but I don’t imagine that will be of any interest.’ He leaned forward to put his tea cup down on the table. ‘In any case, the chap said he was coming on Thursday, so we shall know then and be ready to report at next week’s meeting in the hall.’
Elaine nodded. ‘I suppose Mrs Boniface will be there.’
Gordon looked at her, the pale yellow dress adding colour to her hazel eyes, eyes normally hinting at laughter but able to spark with anger when she talked of Mrs Boniface, and Gordon wondered if she was being provocative or flippant; there were times when he wasn’t sure if she was poking fun or deadly serious. ‘I’m not aware of her having any objections to my turning the Manor House into a rest home for soldiers returning from war zones,’ he said with a shrug. ‘As we’ve mentioned before, they can bring their families and re-establish their family relationships. It’s not just the men who have to adjust, the children suddenly find they have a father again and sometimes resent another parent who wants to tell them what to do. It’s not just the teens either, some of the wee ones have problems.’
Elaine nodded understanding. ‘It happens when children from what Mrs Boniface would call ‘good families’ go to boarding school, Gordon, she’ll want to get her oar in, there’s no show without Punch.’
Gordon nodded and pursed his lips. ‘I hope she doesn’t get all shirty about the soldier’s families, Elaine. They’re not perfect and some can be real tearaways if their mother is a bit weak on discipline. They’re just like any kids really, but having a father in danger and a mother worried about it, isn’t a normal childhood.’
‘Well, you won’t be able to keep them apart from the village children, Gordon. They’ll be curious about each other and find ways of getting together, or fighting, one or the other. It will sort itself out as long as the parents don’t get involved. The children will forget next day but the parents will remember till Doomsday. I’d be more worried about the young soldiers and the local girls, if I were you.’
‘I thought all I needed to do was clean up a few rooms and give a few guys a break with their families. This has got out of control and if it wasn’t for Henry and yourself, I’d go back to having a dream I do nothing about; it had promise and hope but no actual worries. In any case, let’s enjoy this fine weather and I’ll walk you home.’
He rose and waited for Elaine to look for her handbag, find it beside the chair and join him on the top step of the portico. ‘Maybe we could go past the old mill and see how Henry and your charming daughter are getting on,’ Gordon suggested, smiling.
Elaine’s mouth tightened. ‘Charming be damned, these days. Henry is making a lovely home of the place. It’s more like a rag and bone merchant’s than a place where intelligent humans live at the moment and Tracy is not impressed. I’ve no desire to confront her today with the sun shining and the birds singing and a handsome companion to escort me home.’
They smiled at each other and started down the steps to the driveway.
***
Elaine might have been wary of visiting Tracy at the Old Mill but others weren’t.
Having supported each other as they stumbled on loose stones down the rough road that led to the old mill, the matronly Mrs Boniface turned to the thin, narrow faced Mrs Snipes and told her, ‘Take your coat off so that she’ll know we expect to be invited in. We’ll keep our hats on until we’re inside.’
They reached the door, wide enough for a cart and on overhead rollers that slid on a rail, knocked, and stood back and waited for Tracy to answer the knock. Mrs Boniface’s complexion was glowing, only horses sweated in her world, and, in the absence of a fan, she wafted her hand across her face.
As they waited, Mrs Boniface looked round. The mill stood beside and half over the stream that had turned its great wheel. The spars of the wooden wheel had rotted and the previous owner had stripped the wheel when a boy had been badly hurt climbing among the spokes and paddles, but the brickwork of the building showed signs of Henry’s efforts to scrub up the old place.
Mrs Boniface nodded satisfaction at the improvements.
The stream still rushed over the weir and flowed down into the pond at the bottom with a busy splashing. Henry felt it was calming but, rather than calm Mrs Boniface, it only served to agitate her impatience.
She was about to knock again when the door rattled and, while making a show of adjusting her coat on her arm, she turned to smile, her head slightly to one side, as the door slid open.
‘I was hoping to have a word with you, Mr Archer,’ she told the tall lean man who opened the door.
‘Who is it, Henry?’ Tracy’s voice called from inside. ‘If it’s someone collecting, give them a pound and tell them to go.’
Mrs Boniface’s expression stiffened at the suggestion she was a there with a charity collecting tin and, gathering her bosom in her arms, she pulled herself to her full height, almost as tall as Henry, and made her mouth small. ‘We have not come looking for money, Mr Archer. We came to discuss things of particular importance to the community.’
Henry grinned. ‘You’d better come in,’ he told Mrs Boniface. ‘Tracy obviously doesn’t know who it is. Perhaps you’d like tea?’
Mrs Boniface nodded, smiled graciously, and walked inside, followed by Mrs Snipes, who glared up at Henry.
At first, all Mrs Boniface could see was a mess of planks and bags of cement and plaster and bits and pieces of building material with the smell of paint clinging to everything. The materials were neatly s