her, “but not in an automobile, and I don’t care what her ladyship wants.”
“I don’t mind automobiles,” Binnie said. “You could give me lessons, Vicar.”
“What do you think?” he asked Eileen later. “She is a quick study.”
Which was putting it mildly. “I think she’s dangerous enough on foot,” Eileen said, but after a week of her stealing signboards off front gates (“We had to,” she said when caught with Miss Fuller’s Hyacinth Cottage sign, and showed Eileen a year-old Ministry of Defence directive ordering all signposts to be taken down), Eileen decided driving might be the lesser of two evils.
“But you’re to do exactly as the vicar says,” she told Binnie sternly, “and you’re not to set foot in the Austin except during driving lessons.”
Binnie nodded. “Can Alf ’ave lessons, too?”
“No. He’s not allowed to be in the car with you at all. Is that clear?”
Binnie nodded, but when she and the vicar pulled up to the manor after her first tentative trip down the drive, Alf was leaning over the backseat. “We found him at the end of the drive,” the vicar explained. “He’d twisted his ankle.”
“’E ain’t able to walk at all,” Binnie said.
“A likely story,” Eileen said, opening the back door. “You do not have a sprained ankle, Alf. Out. Now.”
Alf got out, wincing. “Ow! It ’urts!” Binnie helped him limp around to the servants’ entrance, leaning heavily on her.
“They’re quite good,” the vicar said, watching them. “They should consider going on the stage.” He grinned at Eileen. “Especially since the sprained ankle was a last-minute improvisation. We came round the curve rather suddenly and caught him preparing to spread tacks on the drive.”
“No doubt to puncture the Germans’ tires when they invade.”
“No doubt,” he said. He looked after Binnie, who was half-carrying Alf inside. “But to prevent any further attempts on my tires, I think it’s best I keep him under my eye during future lessons. You needn’t worry, I have no intention of letting him behind the wheel, and besides, he’s not tall enough to reach the pedals.” He smiled. “Binnie’s actually quite good. I’m glad you suggested I give her lessons.”
Yes, well, we’ll see, Vicar, Eileen thought, but even though Binnie drove much too fast—“Ambulances got to go fast, to get to ’ospital before the people die,” she said—the lessons otherwise proceeded without a hitch, and Eileen was immensely grateful for at least some time when she needn’t worry what the Hodbins were up to, because four new evacuees had arrived, one of whom was a bed wetter and all of whom had arrived in rags. Eileen spent every spare moment mending and sewing on buttons.
There weren’t many spare moments, though. Lady Caroline had decided everyone should learn to use a stirrup pump, and announced that the vicar was going to give them lessons in how to disable an automobile by removing the distributor head and leads. In between, Eileen attempted to keep an eye on Alf and Binnie, who’d stopped heckling Una’s driving lessons and moved on to more ambitious projects, such as digging up Lady Caroline’s prize roses to plant a Victory garden, and Eileen began counting the days to her liberation.
When she had the time. Lady Caroline’s son Alan arrived home on holiday from Cambridge with two friends, which meant even more laundry and beds to make up, and, as the war news grew worse, more and more evacuees arrived. By the end of March, there were so many the manor couldn’t take them all. They had to be billeted in the surrounding villages, and in every cottage and farm in the area.
Eileen and the vicar used her driving lessons to pick up the draggled-looking children at the station. They were often sobbing and/or train-sick, and more than one vomited in the vicar’s car as he and Eileen delivered them to their assigned billets—some of which were extremely primitive, with outhouses and stern foster parents who believed regular beatings were good for five-year-olds. If Eileen hadn’t had her hands full with her own evacuees, she would have been more than able to view evacuees “in a variety of situations.”
But they were up to twenty-five children, more than half of them their original evacuees who’d come back. By mid-April, all of them had returned except Theodore. His mother probably couldn’t get him onto the train, Eileen thought, wearily making up more cots. I can’t believe I ever complained about not having enough evacuees.