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  Yet the truth was he did the same himself. What else could a bloke do when his girl sulked and wept and said she was going to kill herself?

  His own father was quick to notice his waning interest. ‘You’re home early,’ he said, glancing at his watch on Christmas afternoon when Norman joined him in the front parlour. ‘Not spending the evening with Elsie?’

  ‘No.’ Norman took a chair beside the fire. ‘I need an early night. I have to cycle back tomorrow.’

  ‘I thought you were staying longer.’

  ‘Changed my mind.’

  Mr Thorne eyed him for a moment. ‘Have you and Elsie fallen out?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Then what’s the problem?’

  ‘The usual. I can’t afford to get married yet.’

  A short silence fell between them.

  ‘Is that the real reason you’re putting the wedding off?’ Mr Thorne asked then.

  ‘What other reason would there be?’

  ‘You’re not in love with her any more.’ He leaned forward to look at his son. ‘If so, it would be kinder to be honest with her now . . . Give her a chance to find someone else.’

  ‘She doesn’t want anyone else, Dad. She’s mad about me. Says she’ll kill herself if I ever let her down. She has these black moods when she thinks the whole world’s against her.’ He dropped his hands between his knees and picked at some fluff on the carpet. ‘Mr Cameron says he’ll sue me for breach of promise if I don’t marry her.’

  Mr Thorne smiled slightly. ‘I wouldn’t let that scare you. It’s an idle threat. No one takes a man to court unless there’s money to be made out of him. And you don’t have any.’

  ‘I don’t want to treat her badly, Dad. I’m still fond of her.’

  ‘I’m sure you are, son. But it would be cruel to marry her . . . then spend the rest of your life wishing you hadn’t.’

  The idea that it would be kinder to let Elsie down gently took root in Norman’s mind. He told her not to visit because of the winter cold and wrote fewer letters to her. Those he sent were cool and formal, and contained no expressions of love. He hoped she’d take the hint and give up of her own accord.

  She didn’t.

  As his ardour cooled, Elsie’s grew. Her replies were full of passion – ‘I adore you . . . I worship you . . . I can’t wait for the spring . . .’ It was as if she thought the power of her feelings could scorch through the page into Norman’s heart. How could any man fail to respond to a woman who loved him so deeply?

  As often as not, Norman left the letters unopened. Just the sight of her handwriting on the envelope set his teeth on edge. He was unable to deal with so much emotion. He felt swamped and oppressed by the false picture Elsie painted of him.

  He was a failed chicken farmer with mounting debts who found his fiancée tiresome. So why did she keep calling him her ‘clever darling husband’ and herself ‘his true little wife’?

  As soon as the weather improved, she came down to the farm for a weekend. He tried to tell her that he wanted the relationship to end. But she became hysterical, stamping her feet and hissing abuse.

  ‘I don’t want to talk. Do you think I’m stupid? Do you think I don’t know what’s going on?’

  Norman shook his head guiltily. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Look at the sheets,’ she spat. ‘You’ve had other women in them.’ She pulled the bedclothes off and kicked them against the wall. ‘They’re dirty. You’re dirty.’ Her thin body quivered with anger. ‘You’ve been doing things on our special place. It’s hateful . . . disgusting.’

  He stared at her open-mouthed. ‘You’re crazy! I don’t know any other women . . . not to kiss and cuddle, anyway.’

  ‘What about prostitutes?’ she screamed. ‘You’re wasting your money on sluts, Norman. I know you are! That’s why you never have any money.’

  ‘You need your head seeing to, Elsie,’ he said in disgust.

  She burst into a storm of tears and flung herself against his chest. ‘I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry, pet. You don’t know what it’s like being away from you. I get so depressed. I get so jealous.’

  He gave her an awkward hug. ‘There’s nothing to be jealous about.’

  ‘But I don’t know that,’ she said, wrapping her thin arms round his waist. ‘I keep thinking of you doing to other girls what you do to me. It’s nice, darling. I like it.’ She pulled him against her. ‘You like it, too. See.’

  She tried to guide his hand towards her breast, but he pulled away sharply as if she’d given him an electric shock. ‘Don’t,’ he said harshly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s not right.’

  Her eyes glittered angrily behind her glasses. ‘You were happy to do it last year. You can’t mess with me then pretend it didn’t happen, Norman. I’m not some cheap tart you can throw over when you get bored. I’m the woman you’re going to marry.’

  He headed for the door. ‘I have to clean the chicken sheds,’ he muttered. ‘We’ll talk later.’

  Norman threw himself into work as a way to avoid contact. Elsie watched listlessly from the shack doorway. He couldn’t decide what to do. Tell her outright that it was over? Or keep hoping that she would take the hint herself? Surely even Elsie – despite her strangeness – must see there was nothing to be gained by marrying a man who didn’t love her?

  But when the evening came, she behaved as if nothing had happened. The bed was re-made, and Norman was her ‘own dear darling’ again. It was as if she had spent the whole day working out how to win back his favour. No angry looks. No stamping. No touching. Just healthy cooking and lots of light laugher . . . plus an endless stream of fond words.

  In an odd sort of way it made Norman feel more abused than if she had forced herself on him. For it suggested that he was shallow and uncaring. Did she really believe that all he thought about was his stomach? And that food should be served with smiles and silly endearments?

  By the time he walked her to the station on Sunday afternoon, he was close to strangling her. Why couldn’t she see how much she repulsed him? More than anything he hated the feel of her coarse, chewed fingertips against his skin.

  Crowborough – summer 1924

  NORMAN MET BESSIE COLDICOTT at a local dance that Whitsun. It was shortly after the weekend with Elsie. Bessie was everything Elsie wasn’t. She was young. She was pretty. She was warm and understanding. And she enjoyed flirting. Best of all, she accepted Norman for what he was. A young man who was struggling to make a living in difficult times.

  He loved the way she made no demands on him. With no fear of being left on the shelf, she was content to chatter about anything that didn’t include wedding bells. Suddenly Norman could be the person he wanted to be. A bit of a lad. A bit of joker.

  It was a rebirth. Instead of the morose silences that had begun to mark his relationship with Elsie, he could be witty and funny with Bessie. They started walking out together within a week of the dance.

  ‘Am I your first girl?’ she asked him one day.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What were the others like?’

  ‘Not a patch on you. The first one looked like a horse.’ He grinned. ‘The second one looked like a horse’s arse.’

  Bessie danced away from him. ‘I don’t believe you. I bet they were pretty and I bet you’ve had more than two. A bloke can have his pick these days.’

  ‘I was a slow starter . . . but I’m catching up now.’ He ran after her and caught her round the waist. ‘Like this.’ He planted a kiss on her full, soft lips.

  Her eyes flashed with mischief. ‘Don’t go getting ideas, Norman Thorne. I’ve plenty of other admirers and there’s some I like just as well as you.’

  He knew it. All men found Bessie attractive. It was part of her appeal for him. The chase. The thrill of trying to win her. If other men had looked at Elsie in the way they looked at Bessie, he might have prized her more. But Elsie had never turned a head in her life.

  *
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  Each time one of Elsie’s letters arrived, Norman felt twinges of guilt about keeping her dangling. But like all cheats he put his own happiness first. On the two or three weekends that Elsie came to the farm during the summer, he managed to jolly her through them without too many rows. Her moods had less impact when he knew he could laugh with Bessie after she was gone.

  His hardest task was keeping Elsie at bay in the shack. She was at him all the time, rubbing against him and urging him to undress her the way he used to. She told him she’d changed.

  ‘I’m not afraid to have sex any more, pet,’ she coaxed. ‘It’s natural when two people love each other.’

  ‘What if you get pregnant?’

  ‘You can use a rubber if you want.’

  ‘I don’t have them any more,’ he lied. ‘I threw them away. In any case, it’s too dangerous, Else. Your dad’ll give you hell if you end up with a baby out of wedlock.’

  ‘I don’t care, lovey. I want to show you how much you mean to me. And how can I do that unless I give myself to you?’ Tears welled in her eyes. ‘Please let’s do it, Norman. You need to know what a good wife I’ll be.’

  He was canny enough to recognize that this wasn’t her real reason for wanting sex. He began to see their relationship like a game of chess. Each of them was trying to force the other into a corner. Norman wanted Elsie to realize she had no future with him. While Elsie wanted to bind Norman to her by getting pregnant.

  In the dark hours of the night, Norman often tried to convince himself that he should marry Elsie. ‘Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,’ he’d say out loud.

  He’d shared his life with her for four years. She knew more about him than any person on earth. There were even times when the thought of her not being there scared him. Perhaps he’d grow tired of Bessie, too.

  Sometimes he wondered if he cared for women at all. His chickens gave him more affection than people did. It still upset him to break their necks and remove their pretty plumage.

  He loved the way they ran when he called to them. Necks stretched out and legs pumping. The young ones scampered so fast they fell over his feet as he walked towards them. He had to tread carefully. Some were tame enough to be stroked, others skittered away with nervous cheeps.

  He had one cockerel who was a fighter. A Welsummer with blue-black tail feathers and a magnificent red comb. Norman called him Satan because of the evil that lurked in his beady eyes. If a cockerel in the next-door run strayed too close, Satan leapt at the wire and tried to attack him. He guarded his own hens jealously. Norman admired him for it.

  He also admired Satan’s appetite for sex, which meant few of his hens produced unfertilized eggs. This was in contrast to his Buff Orpington and Leghorn cockerels, whose milder natures made them lazy.

  Which wasn’t to say that Norman liked Satan. He treated him as warily as a snake after the bird attacked him from behind one time. Satan drove his sharp spurs into the back of Norman’s leg and the wound hurt for days.

  ‘I don’t know why you don’t kill him,’ said Elsie.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Teach him a lesson.’

  ‘What’s he going to learn when he’s dead? And what good would it do me? Only a madman would kill his best cockerel.’

  ‘Then teach the others a lesson.’

  Norman looked at her with irritation. ‘They’re chickens, Elsie. Their brains are about this big.’ He made a tiny gap between his thumb and forefinger. ‘They learn where their food is and they learn to lay their eggs in the nesting boxes. But that’s it.’

  ‘There’s no need to get snappy with me. I was only trying to help.’

  ‘Yes, well . . . it’s a stupid idea. It was my mistake anyway. I got him riled. It makes him jealous when his hens eat out of my hand.’

  ‘His brain can’t be that small then,’ she said acidly. ‘Isn’t jealousy what humans feel?’

  Norman’s irritation grew. ‘How would I know?’ he asked unkindly. ‘I’ve never had anything to feel jealous about.’

  He was lying, of course. He was jealous of any man who could bring a smile to Bessie Coldicott’s face. She was a dressmaker in Crowborough and he took to hanging around outside the shop where she worked.

  She teased him about it. ‘How come you go down my street so often? The nearest butcher’s two roads away.’

  ‘It’s a short cut.’

  ‘Fibber!’ She tapped him lightly on the wrist. ‘You’ll get me in trouble if you do it too often. Mrs Smith’s a nice lady but she doesn’t like men peering through the window. It upsets the clients.’

  ‘I just want to say hello sometimes.’

  She laughed. ‘But not when I’m working, Norman. I like my job and I don’t want to lose it. You can meet me at the back when I finish of an evening. Then walk me home afterwards.’

  As the summer passed, he spent more and more time with her. He asked her repeatedly to visit the farm but she always refused. ‘You live on your own, Norman. What would people say?’

  ‘Who’s going to see you? It’s in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘Someone will. Bored old ladies peep through their curtains to spy on their neighbours. Everyone talks in a place like this.’

  He wondered if she knew about Elsie. ‘What do they say?’

  ‘That you had a girl visit a few times. Is that true?’

  He’d always known it would come out in the end. He took a deep breath. ‘Yes, but there was nothing wrong about it, Bessie. She never stayed in the shack. It was all above board and proper.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Someone I know from London. I was keen on her once but not any more. The trouble is—’ He broke off. ‘She’s a bit of a loony. Acts weird all the time . . . shouting and yelling one minute, crying the next. She keeps being given the sack because of it.’

  Bessie pulled a face. ‘There’s a woman like that in our street. She bursts into tears if anyone speaks to her. Dad says it’s because she lost two sons in the war, but Mum says she was born weird. She used to do it before they died.’

  ‘Elsie’s always been strange.’

  ‘Is that her name?’

  Norman nodded. ‘Elsie Cameron. It was mostly her parents’ idea that she came to visit. I reckon they hoped I’d marry her and take her off their hands. She’s a lot older than me and they’re fed up with looking after her.’

  ‘That’s horrible.’

  Yes, thought Norman. It was horrible. Why should he be expected to make Mr and Mrs Cameron’s life easier by marrying their mad daughter? He hadn’t given birth to her. He hadn’t spoilt her.

  He reached for Bessie’s hand. ‘Don’t worry, pet. It’s not going to happen. I’ve loads of plans for the future . . . and none of them includes Elsie.’

  ‘What about me? Am I in your plans?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  She gave his fingers a sharp pinch. ‘Then don’t call me “pet”, Norman. I’m not a fluffy chick to be kissed and stroked when you’re in the mood. I’m me – and I don’t belong to anyone.’

  Wesley Poultry Farm, Blackness Road – autumn 1924

  BESSIE CAME TO TEA at the beginning of September. She gave Norman twenty-four hours’ notice and he spent the night and morning cleaning the shack. He couldn’t believe how filthy it was. The floor was covered in chicken shit from his boots, and dust lay everywhere.

  Appalled at the state of his sheets, he went into town and bought new ones. It left him short of money but he didn’t think Bessie would sit on a bed that stank of sweat and grime. He folded the dirty sheets and hid them in an empty nesting box. He planned to swap them back before Elsie’s next visit in case she guessed that another woman had visited.

  His hard work paid off. Bessie was impressed by the hut. ‘It’s quite cosy. How long have you been living here?’

  ‘Two years.’

  ‘Don’t you get cold?’

  ‘I do in the winter.’

  She looked at the beam above her h
ead where he stored his hats. ‘That’s neat. Where do you keep your clothes?’

  ‘Behind here.’ He lifted a curtain that was nailed to one wall. ‘They’re hung on pegs and this keeps the dust off them.’

  ‘Neat,’ she said again. ‘What’s in here?’ She pointed to a small chest of drawers.

  Norman’s heart skipped a beat. Elsie’s love letters. He should have hidden them along with the sheets. ‘Razors . . . nail scissors . . . stuff that men use.’

  She sat on the edge of the bed. ‘It’s better than I thought it would be. I was expecting something tatty.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you call it a shack. I thought it’d be built out of tin . . . or bits of old iron.’ She patted the mattress. ‘If you’d told me it was like this, I might have come sooner.’

  He couldn’t tell if she was giving him a come-on. Because of Elsie’s moods he found women’s signals confusing. Was Bessie inviting him to sit on the bed with her? Was she inviting him to go further? Or was it a test to see how much of a gentleman he was?

  He bent to light the oil stove beneath the kettle. ‘Where would you like your tea?’ he asked.

  ‘Outside,’ she said with a smile. ‘It’s warm in the sunshine.’ She pushed herself upright and walked to the door. ‘We’ll have it inside when the days turn colder.’

  After that, Norman’s life moved out of his control. Bessie started visiting the shack every night after work. And with none of Elsie’s rigid views about rubbers and wedding bells, it wasn’t long before they were having sex. The contrast between her softly welcoming arms and Elsie’s cold, stiff fear could not have been greater.

  How could he ever have fallen for Elsie?

  He tried to gear himself up to tell her the truth. He wrote letters that he never sent. He even went to London at the start of October to say the words to her face. ‘It’s over, Elsie. I don’t love you any more. There’s someone else.’