Free Songs of Spring by Amy Myers Page B

buns,’ Margaret continued, concerned how thin the girl’s face was getting. When Mrs Isabel shook her head, she decided the time had come to speak out. ‘You’re looking after two, remember,’ she pointed out.
    ‘Good, can we have dumplings for luncheon?’
    ‘Dumplings but not much more, most likely.’ There were more dumplings than stew nowadays, even though this wasn’t a meatless day. Meat would be on the rations list for them sooner or later, that was for sure. She’d read so much about the new cards and coupons for butter, marg and meat in London and the Home Counties that her mind whirled. It wouldn’t take long to reach Sussex, and although Mrs Lilley thought everyone would get more once it was distributed more fairly by enforced rations, Margaret was not convinced.
    ‘You’ll have Miss Caroline jealous,’ she replied to Mrs Isabel, highly pleased. ‘She’s always one for a dumpling or two.’
    ‘She’ll have to make them herself now,’ Isabel said soberly, tucking in to the bun after all.
    ‘She’ll be down shortly, I suppose?’ Margaret wasn’t exactly fishing for information: it just slipped out.
    ‘I doubt it.’
    Isabel was leafing through The Lady . The family had given up their copy, but Percy insisted on buying it for Margaret – to take her mind off things, he explained vaguely, as though a magazine could take her mind off Fred. Still, she had to admit she looked forward to reading it every week, and there was no doubt it kept you in touch withhow best to fight the war at home. There were times when even Margaret’s mother’s handed-down resourcefulness failed to cope with what was going on nowadays. What was the use of recipes for nettle soup when no weed would dare show its face in good ploughable land?
    ‘These waistless dresses’ – Isabel scrutinised the sketches – ‘will be just right for me. Harrods Bargain Floor are advertising serge and silk dresses at forty-nine and six.’
    ‘They won’t fit you for long, Mrs Isabel,’ Margaret said daringly.
    ‘Oh well, I’ll just have to ask Agnes – no, I’ll ask Mrs Hazel – to cut a hole in it with a flap,’ Isabel said carelessly. ‘Mrs H needs the work, with everyone doing their own repairing and turning nowadays.’
    Well, who’d have thought Mrs Isabel would ever learn to ‘make do’, and to cast a thought for poor Mrs Hazel struggling to make a living? In her hoity-toity days, she never saw eye to eye with the village dressmaker.
    ‘Miss Caroline and that captain are busy, I expect.’ Margaret meant working together, but Mrs Isabel took it in a different way.
    ‘Don’t let Mother hear you say that. There’s a silence like the Great Wall of China about it.’ Mrs Isabel put down The Lady and blurted out: ‘I don’t think I can stand it much longer, Mrs Dibble. After the row when Caroline walked out, neither Father nor Mother said a word to me about it. I had to pump Phoebe for information. It’s too bad. Just when the Rectory ought to be happy because of my baby, Mother’s thinking about Caroline, as usual. I know she is. I can sense it.’
    That was more like the old Miss Isabel. Margaret had been quite taken aback. ‘Oh, Mrs Isabel, I’m sure you’re wrong.’ It was inadequate, especially since Margaret had more than a suspicion that she wasn’t wrong at all.
    ‘Phoebe’s cheering Caroline on, too,’ Mrs Isabel swept on. ‘Of all the people in the world to fall in love with, why on earth did Caroline have to pick a married Roman Catholic and make our lives a misery?’
    Margaret nearly dropped the basin with the dumpling dough. Married? She’d always known you couldn’t trust the Frenchies, and the Belgians were almost the same thing. Look at that couple who arrived here just after the war had broken out. Tricky customers, all of them. She’d said so then and she’d say so now. And now one had got poor Miss Caroline in his wicked clutches. And to think she’d let him cook in her